Wylands International Angling Centre, near Battle, East Sussex. March 14th, 2009.

Maggotdrowning.com Knock Up.

 

Well it was back to the scene of the MD’s Southern Fur & Feather match today for yet another Knock up organised by Mark(Moleman)Hathaway and Trevor(MT Net)Little through the forum. As I loaded the car up for the drive down it appeared that the weather gods were smiling on us for once with the promise of some decent weather for a change, and hopefully a good few fish would find their way into everyones nets today. Pulling into the fishery car park around 8am a few of the lads were already there and the food hut was soon doing a brisk trade in breakfast rolls and cups of tea and coffee.

By 9am it was time for the draw and it was literally a draw for pegs as Moleman had a bag of numbered cloths pegs. I came out with peg 15 on the day, which was the same peg as I had for the Fur & Feather match previously. Having struggled to get set up comfortably last time, I had my platform with me this time and set it up so that i could use it as a seat, I’d been told by Trevor, who knows the water like the back of his hand that the line to fish was towards a bush on the opposite bank, so that was my plan of attack, I had Bill for company to my right today and Roger(Up Yah)Harris to my left, on the other side of the bridge. The rigs I set up consisted of Malman 4×14 Snake 1′s on 0·12 to an 0·10 bottom with a size 18 hook, one for the margin swim to my right by some weeds where I had a couple of feet of depth. The others were for out into open water at 7mtrs and 10mtrs where I had around 3ft. Bait was maggots and various pellets with some corn for a change bait and some groundbait as well.

While we set up there was a bit of commotion on the opposite bank. Poor Keith(Disco)Driscoll had got his pole out of his holdall, only to watch the whole lot slide down the bank and into the lake!!!! Of course he had to go in for it and thankfully he managed to get the whole lot back. Of course we were all full of sympathy for his plight (Thanks to Vince for capturing it on film )

So 10·30am and the All-in and I fed some maggots and pellets into the margin swim and cupped 5 balls of groundbait in at 10mtrs. I followed out with the rig baited with double maggot. The float settled and just slid away and the culprit, a small skimmer of 2-3 ozs was soon in the net. Bill was in straight away too, but his skimmer was around 1lb!!!! I was soon into a run of skimmers, but they were all the same sort of stamp (2-3ozs) despite switching to 3 maggots on the hook as suggested by Bill, while he continued to bag up with decent 1lb+ examples, and the only reason appeared to be that Bill had a good 4½ft of depth at a comfortable 5mtrs.

Anyway head down and keep going, at least I was catching regularly, even if Bill was battering me, Indeed after a couple of hours I reckoned that I had around 10-12lbs while Bill must have had 40lbs+ and was going to need a second net, Trev meanwhile on the peg to Bill’s right was steadily putting a decent run of fish together alternating between the pole and waggler. Bill was having one of those days though, and soon had loads of Grey Hydro streaming out of his top kit, the culprit being a decent Carp, putting me even further behind………

Having already mentally waved farewell to the £1 I’d had with Bill, I was relying on my customary £1 with Vince to offset it, but my view of Vince was obscured by the island so I just got on with it. The bites kept coming but despite trying various things I just couldn’t up the size of fish I was getting. Very occasionally I would get a better skimmer, but they were always followed by more of their smaller brethren. I seemed to be keeping up with Roger to my left, but even his fish appeared to be of a slightly larger stamp.

Around 2pm Terry(Wily Coyote)Goff put in an appearance, he couldn’t fish today, but being local had popped down to see how things were going just as my bites started to tail off , but I don’t think it was down to Terry as it didn’t seem to matter where you looked as sport seemed to have slowed down for everyone, even Bill.

Vince came round just after 2·30 pm to ask Terry to weigh his fish as he had to get away early as his son was in his first amateur drama production of “The Wind in the Willows”, and of course like any proud parent he wanted to be there. His fish weighed 18lbs 13ozs and he left the £1 with Terry for safe keeping.

With the All-out about to be called Keith’s day unfortunately went from bad to worse. Getting off his box he slipped and the sound of splintering carbon was heard by all across the lake, resulting in a catalogue of carnage (no7 section broken in two, no4 section in 4 pieces and a top 2 pulla kit snapped)

So with the match ending on that unhappy note it was time for the weigh-in. Moleman’s 35lbs 10ozs set the early pace till he was edged out of the frame by Omega Mike’s 37lbs 9ozs from the road bank. Trevor put a fine 50lbs 6ozs on the scales, but it was Bill who took a fine win on the day with 74lbs 2ozs.
My weight of 32lbs 4ozs was only good enough for seventh place on the day, but at least meant that another £1 from Vince had come my way.

All in all a good day in good company as always seems to be the case when the MD’s get together. Here’s to the next one.

Position	Angler	Weight
1st	Bill(Zak Dingle)Gibbins	74lbs 02ozs
2nd	Trevor(MT Net)Little	50lbs 06ozs
3rd	Mike(Omega Mike)Jameson	37lbs 09ozs
4th	Mark(Moleman)Hathaway	35lbs 10ozs
5th	Roger(Up Yah)Harris	35lbs 04ozs
6th	Anthony(Pastehead)Ellis	34lbs 12ozs
7th	Peter(Mugger)Morton	32lbs 04ozs
8th	Tony(spamwham)Roberts	25lbs 14ozs
9th	Simon Elsey	25lbs 08ozs
10th	Keith(Disco)Driscoll	24lbs 05ozs
11th	Paul(Paulvis69)Slater	21lbs 05ozs
12th	Gary(oggie)Ogden	20lbs 06ozs
13th	Vince(Vince G)Gould	18lbs 13ozs
14th	Mick(Old Carper)	18lbs 12ozs
15th	Ade(Wingnut)Morgan	9lbs 07ozs
16th	Mick(The Chippy)Pearson	8lbs 14ozs