Pea Lane Fishery. Essex. April 25, 2009

Marsh AC club match.

Today was the 2nd match of the year for Marsh AC, at Pea Lane Fishery (a new venue for the club). It’s a gravel pit controlled by Becmain Angling Club that was dug out when the M25 was being built. Loading up the car it was noticeably cooler than it had been during the previous week, with the threat of rain in the air. I arrived at Dave’s around 7·30am to meet up with Dave, Colin and Chris and follow them to the fishery, and a short drive saw us pulling into the fishery car park just after 8am.

As people assembled prior to the draw I had a quick look at the water, everything I’d heard about the water indicated it could be peggy as hell with pegs 1,4,5 and 7 being the ones to draw, and with the wind blowing into it today peg 7 appeared to be the stand-out one today. The “Burger van” was a bit slow to get up and running today, so we put our orders in to be delivered to our pegs and did the draw. Peg 10 was mine for the day (not where I wanted to be.) Dave and Colin as is customary took the last 2 pegs in the hat with Colin getting 18, leaving PEG 7 for Dave !!!

Settling into my peg a few drops of rain started to fall, but thankfully soon stopped. I set up 3 top kits, the first was rigged up with a 4X16 Preston Bazzerla PB19 on 0·16 to 0·14 bottom with size 16 Drennan Match Carp hook for a line at 10mtrs where I had around 6ft of water, the gusting wind from left to right making it impractical to fish any longer. The second was a Malman 4×14 Snake 1 on 0·12 to an 0·10 bottom with a size 18 carbon maggot as an up in the water rig, should the Ide put in an appearance, while the third was a KC 4×12 Carpa Tricky on 0·16 to 0·14 bottom with size 16 Drennan Match Carp hook for the margins where I had 2-2½ft of water. I also set up the feeder rod as I’d been told that it was possible to drop on some bream from some pegs. Bait was red maggots, corn and pellet, with some Special G groundbait and hemp for feed.

Breakfast arrived in the shape of a bacon & egg baguette and I was just finishing this as the all in was called.
Chris over on peg 6 was into a fish straight away, with plenty of black hydro streaming out of the pole and after about 5 minutes had the culprit in the net, a Barbel of around 2½lbs………

I fed some pellet into the margins and potted out a mix of hemp, pellet and maggot at 10 mtrs and followed it out with 2 maggots on the depth rig. The float settled and slid away and an Ide of around 6ozs got me off the mark, soon followed by a similar sized Chub. An hour later and I was still waiting for a third bite !!! Half an hour on the feeder was no better, but gave me the opportunity to take some shots of the wildlife.

and already word was spreading along the bank that it was rock hard with just a few bits for most, although Dave had already snared a couple of Carp from the flyer, it seemed that most were struggling to get to grips with the venue on the day.

Terry had appeared around 12·30 eating a burger, that being his only bite so far!! and I made the decision having only added a foul hooked Gudgeon and a couple of blade skimmers to stick 5 balls of groundbait onto the 10mtr line and have a stroll. Dave was happily plugging away and admitting to 5 carp…………

……….but for the rest it was grim, with nobody admitting to more than a few silvers, so I decided to take the burger option and get a bite to eat. All I can say is that it’s probably best to stick to bacon, as hand on heart I couldn’t tell what the burger was made of ???? Thank God for onions and mustard, at least it gave it some flavour.

Back at my peg I could see Judy over on peg 4 occasionally popping fish in her net, was I going to get beaten by the club’s lady angler twice in a row ?

Had the groundbait done the trick? Well I wasn’t pulling up any tree stumps, but I started to put together a few small skimmers and Ide which was an improvement and I just kept pinging a few maggots over the top in an effort to keep them coming. Frustratingly though they wouldn’t come up in the water, I could only get a bite at depth, but at least I was putting something in the net on a reasonably regular basis. Terry had at last had a couple of bites, but he’d missed both of them.

With around an hour to go my bites had dried up again, so I put in another 3 balls of groundbait, then Al wandered round and we decided to go and see what some decent swims looked like. We found Dave admitting to having had a few more Carp including one around the 10lb mark, but apparently engaged in a tug of war with a patch of reeds, It’s amazing just how far Red Hydro can stretch !!!!!

Judy was plugging away on peg 4, but was frustrated, feeling she probably hadn’t got the best from it, while Jim on peg 3 was in a bit of trouble with a Carp snagged in roots and struggling to net it, finally it was in the net though, a Common of around 7lbs, a real bonus on the day.

Back at my peg, and the groundbait had brought a few back to the swim with a few better skimmers around the 8-12oz mark coming to the net. Looking up Chris had plenty of pole in the air again before landing what looked to be a bonus Carp, while Terry reported that he had finally hooked a couple of fish, only to have them drop off.

Thankfully at 4pm Dave sounded the All-out to put most of us out of our misery. The weigh-in told the tale of the day really, Jim on peg 3 weighed 14¾lbs including his Carp to take 2nd place on the day, While Chris was just 4ozs behind him with 14½lbs. Dave had walked it off the flyer however, weighing in 46¼lbs (not a bad belated birthday present). I was pleasantly surprised to find that my net of bits weighed 13¼lbs for 4th on the day.


Overall the day had been a real struggle though with more than a few suffering their own “Mugger Moments©”, though as usual there had been more than a few laughs with plenty of banter flying around to make up for the disappointing fishing. The next Marsh AC match is at Colemans Cottage on May 16th, but next up for me is a match at Broad Oak in Kent with the lads from Maggotdrowning.com next Saturday, that you’ll be able to read about here as usual.
 

Position	Peg	Angler	Weight
1st	Peg 7	Dave Collier	46lbs 04ozs
2nd	Peg 3	Jim Boase	14lbs 12ozs
3rd	Peg 6	Chris Withall	14lbs 08ozs
4th	Peg 10	Peter Morton	13lbs 04ozs
5th	Peg 4	Judy Hermite	11lbs 08ozs
6th	Peg 13	Tony Roberts	9lbs 00ozs
7th	Peg 18	Colin Sharrard	8lbs 04ozs
8th	Peg 1	Roger Noakes	4lbs 08ozs
9th	Peg 8	John Holdsworth	3lbs 04ozs
10th	Peg 19	Ken Walker	3lbs 00ozs
11th	Peg 15	Ed Dobson	2lbs 00ozs
12th=	Peg 12	Al Loader          (Guest)	1lbs 12ozs
12th=	Peg 14	Zack Johnson	1lbs 12ozs
14th	Peg 17	Martin Hucker	1lbs 08ozs
15th	Peg 5	Graham Manning	1lbs 00ozs
16th	Peg 11	Terry Goff	DNW
17th	Peg 21	Rod Turner	DNW