Rolf’s Lake. Holton. Oxfordshire. May 3rd, 2008.

The JINX Series 2008

Match 1.

Well Today saw the 1st match of this years Jinx Series run by Malc (The Jinx) Doyle at Rolf’s Lake. The entire series this year is being fished at Rolf’s Lake. There’s 24 lunatics anglers booked in for this years series, all hopeful that some decent weights will be recorded.

One of the nice things about fishing the series is that the matches start around lunchtime and todays plan was for a 10·30am draw and to fish from noon to 5pm. I arrived at the fishery at about 10am to find plenty already in attendance and eager for the start. I have to say at this point that it was great to see that all the effort that John Bennett and his wife Pauline and their team of helpers have put into the venue since he took over from Rolf are beginning to bear fruit, with all the new platforms and a lot of pruning haven taken place since I last visited. I’m sure Rolf will have approved.

The 1st shock was Malc arriving early, but needless to say the draw still didn’t take place on time, and with the delay it meant that we would be fishing from 12·30pm to 5·30pm. As usual I had my customary £1 side bet with Gemma (The Minx) and another with Dirk, as Midge Milnes had asked me to get his pound back that Dirk had taken from him on a previous match.

The weather looked half decent, plenty of Carp were showing on top, and there had been some decent weights recorded the day before, so could we be in for a decent day? Well into the draw bag and I found that peg 40 was to be my home for the day.

Now coincidently Clive had fished this peg on the Open the previous Sunday and I had read the details of the day on Clive’s Blog so I had at least an idea of how to tackle it. On the Little Lake I had Colin on peg 34 (a peg that’s really suited to his style of fishing) Ant was on 38 while to my left I had Dai on peg 2 for company with Nick Williams over on 4, while the last angler I could see was Dave Collier on peg 7. All the rest were pegged on the Big Lake, but hopefully the recent warmer weather meant that the fish would be spreading out from their winter quarters and we would all be in for a few fish today.

I just set up the 2 pole rigs. The 1st a ·4g MW Diamond to fish dead depth (about 5ft) straight out at 11mtrs, though I could come in to 5mtrs with it as the depth was pretty constant and the 2nd a 4X12 KC Carpa Shelf for the margin that I could utilise as an up in the water rig if need be. These were both made up straight through with 0·16 Antares Silk Shock with size 16 Drennan Carp Match hooks. I also had my pellet waggler rod set up as a back up. Feed was about 12 pints of the fishery 4 & 6mm feed pellets with GOT Baits Liver and Catmeat 6 & 11mm soft hookers and their 6mm expanders for hook baits.

12·30pm and at the All-in I cupped 2 big potful's of pellet in on the 11mtr line and a pot down the right hand margin at about 7mtrs. By the time I had baited my rig and shipped out to 11mtrs there was already a fizz of bubbles coming up, After a minute the float vanished and a sharp lift saw me attached to what was obviously a decent Carp. Looking up as I played it I could see both Colin and Ant already netting their first fish of the day. Something just didn’t feel right about my fish though and after a couple of minutes everything went slack and the hook came back with a large scale attached to it.

That set the tone for the first couple of hours, with just 3 Carp to show for my efforts and quite a collection of scales on the sidetray, despite swapping depths, baits and varying the amount of feed I was plagued with foul hookers, none of which I managed to land. A couple of looks in the margin proved it to be “Silvers” city and a session with the pellet waggler had resulted in just a solitary foul hooker which of course came off.

Nick had gone onto the feeder and was catching regularly if not particularly quickly. Ant had started to have a look down his margin swim and was starting to bag up. I got up to stretch my legs and decided to heavily feed at 5mtrs to see if I could make them have it on my return. Dai had had a miserable start but was finally getting some action.
I strolled up to see Dave but although he’d had a few including a decent Chub by chucking the feeder across to the far bank, he’d reverted to the pole as he was more comfortable. Rumours were circulating that the Big Lake was fishing well, but rather than investigate I made my way back determined to avoid too bad a battering.

Back out at 5mtrs and there were fish there, but Skimmers and Roach were ragging the bait before the Carp could get a look in. In an attempt to avoid this I decided to fish the 6mm feed pellet banded onto the hook, and this finally seemed to make the difference. In the final 2 hours I got into a decent run of fish, finishing with 17 Carp though only 3 of them were weighers.

5·30 and the All-out was called with me still playing a fish which proved to be my largest of the day, a 13½lbs Common.
Packing up it was soon obvious that it had fished well (You can always tell by how long it takes for the scales o come round). Ant was soon leading with an excellent 228¾lbs, 180lbs+ of which was made up of weighers . My fish came to 142¾lbs, my best weight from Rolf’s and pretty satisfying given my frustrating start to the match. Dirk dipped out, just missing a ‘Ton’ with 94lbs after his fish dried up towards the end of the match, and had to hand over £1 to me.

The ‘Tons’ kept coming and Paul Roberts could be found wandering around beating himself up, convinced that he had blown yet another chance to get his first ever Rolf’s Ton, but the scales put him out of his misery when they revealed a weight of 118½lbs. I’m sure we were all pleased for him and he was soon walking around like a Cheshire Cat.

Gemma also got her Ton with 149lbs adding yet more members of The Minx Club in the process and relieving me of my £1.

Hard luck story of the day has to be Steve Wilson who found a great big hole in one of his keepnets meaning he only weighed 57lbs. Of course we were all full of sympathy. Star of the day however was Ade Williams aka Slim Shady, who on his first ever Jinx match weighed a mighty 266¾lbs from peg 24 to set a new Jinx Record.

So there it is, Two Double Tons, Nine Tons and a total of 2316lbs of fish put on the scales between 21 anglers which is an incredible average of 110lbs+ per angler.
Have we peaked to early? We’ll find out when we’re back for Match 2 on June 7th.

Position	Peg	Angler	Weight
1st	Peg 24	Ade Williams	266lbs 12ozs
2nd	Peg 38	Ant Haywood	228lbs 12ozs
3rd	Peg 27	Clive Pritchard	170lbs 12ozs
4th	Peg 32	Tony Roberts	157lbs 00ozs
5th	Peg 20	Gemma Doyle	149lbs 00ozs
6th	Peg 34	Colin Sharrard	146lbs 12ozs
7th	Peg 4	Nick Williams	145lbs 00ozs
8th	Peg 40	Peter Morton	142lbs 12ozs
9th	Peg 7	Dave Collier	133lbs 08ozs
10th	Peg 9	Paul Roberts	118lbs 08ozs
11th	Peg 13	Malc Doyle	107lbs 08ozs
12th	Peg 10	Dirk Williams	94lbs 00ozs
13th	Peg 18	Mark Causer	82lbs 08ozs
14th	Peg 29	Roy Ravenhill	71lbs 04ozs
15th	Peg 2	Dai Thomas	58lbs 00ozs
16th	Peg 23	Steve Wilson	57lbs 00ozs
17th	Peg 19	Keith Fellows	55lbs 12ozs
18th	Peg 16	Mitch Auger	55lbs 04ozs
19th	Peg 14	Jon Hatch	32lbs 08ozs
20th	Peg 30	Nick- Watkins- Price	22lbs 08ozs
21st	Peg 22	Kevin Loveland	21lbs 00ozs