Old Bury Hill Fishery. Milton Lake. August 22nd, 2004.

Hawthorne AC club match.

 Sunday found me making my way down to Dorking for a Hawthorne AC club match on Milton Lake at Old Bury Hill. One of the most popular venues in this part of the country, and the usual suspects turned up along with along with a couple of guests, Omega Mike from TotalFishing.Com and Peter9000uk, both eager to guest and have the chance of getting amongst the Crucians and Tench that the venue is so well known for.

Everything looked lovely at the draw and I found myself with peg 19. (The same as I had drawn in our last club match there)

Peg 19

Shortly after the all in at 9am however, it soon became clear that all was not well, as the fish seemed to have almost entirely switched off. I have never seen this lake fish so badly, whether it was the rainwater that had gone in the previous week, or the couple of cold nights leading up to the match I don’t know, but the half time weigh-in took all of 5 mins as only a couple of anglers had enough to trouble the scalesmen.
Omega Mike decided that the comforts of home were more attractive and left half way through and I can’t say I blamed him. Stiffy, another TotalFishing poster turned up for a short chat as he was fishing the Estate Lake and had a similar tale of woe as all but a couple of pegs on there were struggling too.

I finally managed to extract 4 Crucians and a similar number of Rudd for a grand total of 4lbs 9ozs and 7th place. The winner managing 33lbs 1oz off of peg 4 which is an out and out flyer, but with 3 dry nets and a similar number only weighing in ounces, it was overall a very disappointing day.

Just to add insult to injury walking back to the car park I passed Bonds Lake only to see 7 anglers all playing carp at the same time. How can 2 lakes just 10 yards apart fish so differently on the same day??????