Rockells Farm. Saffron Walden. Essex. June 28th, 2009.

Marsh AC club match.

Todays venue for the Marsh AC club match is Rockells Farm. It’s the venue where I set a new club match record last year of 293½lbs and the club recorded their all time best aggregate weight of 1991lbs weighed in between 18 anglers.

As usual I got round to Dave’s at 6·45am to follow him and Colin down to the venue, It’s not the easiest of venues to find without a Sat Nav, being somewhat off the beaten track, but we made good time despite quite a bit of fog on the trip up and pulled into the car park just after 8am.

There were 19 booked in for todays match, 15 club members and 4 guests, Clive and Al who are in danger of becoming permanent fixtures and Keith Ashby and Vic Nugent (both GOT Baits sponsored anglers) who enjoy the occasional trip out with the club due to the relaxed atmosphere and the banter and laughs that are had during the day.

With no permanent numbers allocated to the pegs at Rockells, Keith and I set off into the lifting fog to peg out while Dave sorted the monies out. Every peg appeared to have fish moving in front of it and in the margins promising a good days sport ahead. Pegs 1-3 went into the very end, and could all be regarded as flyers, while pegs 4-11 went in down the right hand side and 12-19 up the left (The high numbers being where you wanted to be). With draw time approaching, 3 members hadn’t arrived (Martin, Zack & Graham) but the draw went ahead anyway.

Keith & Vic drew pegs 1 & 2, and with them both being very positive anglers would take all the stopping on those pegs . My home for the day would be peg 17, with Al for company on peg 18. At the end of the draw there were 3 pegs left which I drew for the missing anglers peg 3 for Martin and peg 19 for Graham (Both flyers) and peg 14 for Zack.

Settling into peg 17 I have to say that I was happy with my draw. I’m pretty single minded in how I approach Rockells, always fishing paste as close in as I can and peg 17 looked tailor made for it, with nettles and reeds overhanging the left hand margin and boards in the right hand margin ………

The rigs were simplicity itself, 3 top 2′s holding rigs that were made up of 4X12 Middy Paste Floats that are a really strong line through design made up on ·20 Ultima Power Match finished off with a Drennan size 12 Carp Method hook to fish paste in both margins where I had around 2 feet of water on both sides. I had 6 pints of it made up, which was GOT Baits Atomic with some GOT Baits Pineapple Atomic Cloud added. Feed would be a mix of soaked 4 and 6 mm pellet. I had 2 extra sections of pole set up, but hopefully wouldn’t be using them unless I hooked a real beast as I really wanted to be able to fish just the top 2′s for speed and comfort.

Just along on peg 18 Al’s swim looked well capable of pushing me all the way, especially as Al has been putting some good results together recently………

Martin, Zack and Graham had arrived meanwhile, and I fancied that Martin might be in with a chance on peg 3, as although he would only class himself as a pleasure angler, he’d had a good result here last year weighing in a total of 232¾lbs, so the venue obviously suits his approach.
Looking across I could see Keith, apparently lost in his thoughts, sitting on his flyer, so no pressure there then……

The fog had burnt off by now, but there was still a fair bit of cloud, so although it was warming up hopefully it wouldn’t turn into the total scorcher that had been predicted. With the venues potential to produce big weights todays match was being split into two 3 hour sessions with a 1 hour break mid way through for a mid-match weigh-in taken at the fishery owners insistence, so with everyone set the All-In was called at 10am for the morning session.

A handful of pellet into both margins, and with fish already showing on my left side that’s where the 1st bit of paste was lowered into. A couple of knocks and the float slid away and the first Carp of the day, a small Mirror of around 12ozs was soon safely in the net, number 1 on the clicker. To be honest it was pretty much steady away for me from then on. Al however seemed to be having a few problems, it looked as if he was fishing pellet that was being intercepted by Roach and the smaller Carp, on top of which he seemed to be bumping a few better fish. I was getting a few to many small Carp for my liking, but I found last year that you just had to wade through them and keep the bait going in to draw the better fish, and I started to put a few better 2-3lb fish together. They were all coming from the left hand margin though as every time I looked down the right I was waiting to long for a bite before landing yet another 8oz Carp.

2 hours in with 44 fish on the clicker another look down the right hand margin resulted in an instant bite and a much better fish powered off and after an anxious couple of minutes a nice Leather Carp of around 12lbs was safe in the net. With a few tail patterns now showing by the boards I concentrated on that line for the last hour. With 5 minutes to go I fed 4 pints of pellet into the right hand margin and another couple down the left in an attempt to hold the fish during the hours break for the weigh-in, while a final put in produced a 5lb Common Carp as the All-Out was called at 1pm.

The weigh-in started from my side and my weight of 120lbs made up of 62 fish was comfortably leading till it came to the 1st 3 pegs. Keith on peg 1 put 148lbs on the scales (and he reckoned he was getting roached out, lying ******) while Vic on peg 2 ran him close with 133¼lbs, however it was Martin who put us all in our place when he put a staggering 180¾lbs on the scales for the half way lead. So with over 1100lbs of fish weighed it looked like all the club records set last year would be going, as it normally fishes better in the afternoon. In fact it had taken the whole hour to weigh-in meant that we delayed the start of the afternoon session to allow everyone to get back to their pegs.
As I strolled back I noticed that Clive was looking a bit numb as he’d struggled on peg 10 for a mere 22lbs and already needed snookers ……

……… it looks like his drawing hand has decided to get its own back on him big time, for all the punishment he’s given it for miss behaving recently.

Returning to my peg I could see that despite the disturbance of the weigh-in the fish had settled on the pellets by the boards as evidenced by the tail patterns I could see. So 2·15pm and the All-In was called for the afternoon session. 1st put in and away goes the float attached to a 3lb Common and that’s the way it continued. Al seeing how successful paste had been for me gave it a go, and while it was an improvement he was having yet another nightmare as he suffered from hook pulls and foul hookers.
Elsewhere round the lake sport wasn’t quite so fast and furious I’m afraid, in fact rumour had it that Clive had put a pair of ear plugs in, so that he didn’t have to keep hearing the splashing of fish coming to others nets……

 I suffered with a few foul hookers as well during the afternoon session, despite cutting down on the feed, there were just so many fish down by the boards, even hooked fish charging through them didn’t spook them. I basically fished the right hand margin for the whole 3 hours as the bites kept coming and they were from a better stamp of fish than those from the left hand margin.

In fact, by the time the All-Out was called at 5·15pm I was quite relieved as my right shoulder was starting to ache, and a quick glance showed me that I had another 61 fish on the clicker.

I was soon packed away and dropped my kit back to the car, before making my way round to the weigh-in which was starting with Keith as the scales had been left there at the end of the morning session.
Well, What can I say, Keith put an amazing 234lbs on the scales for a total of 382lbs, Vic added 173¼lbs for a combined weight of 306½lbs, while Martin weighed 202½lbs to edge out Keith by 1¼lbs with a total weight of 383¼lbs. So that was over 1000lbs of fish weighed in from the first 3 pegs !!!
Dave had had a decent afternoon on peg 6 putting 167½lbs on the scales for a total of 254¼lbs. Tony on peg 8 recorded a total of 142½lbs and most had improved on their morning totals by the time we got round to Colin on peg 15 who added a net of 127½lbs for a total of 211lbs meanwhile Terry on peg 16 recorded a total of 140¾lbs.
When it came to my peg the scales recorded a weight of 210lbs giving me a total of 330lbs and 3rd place on the day. Alan put a hard earned 101½lbs on the scales for a total of 171¾lbs while Graham rounded off things with a total weight of 114lbs for the 2 sessions.

So there you have it, Martin is now the proud holder of the club match record at 383lbs 4ozs. The top 10 anglers recorded 4 ‘Triple Tons’, 2 ‘Double Tons’ and 4 ‘Tons’ between them. A club record total of 2911lbs 14ozs was weighed in between 19 anglers, an average of over 153lbs per angler. I broke my 3 hour PB match weight as well as my PB overall match weight as did quite a few others. Hopefully we’ll get a chance to try and better that next year, or is that being greedy?

Position	Peg	Angler	Morning	Afternoon	Total Weight
1st	Peg 3	Martin Hucker	180lbs 12ozs	202lbs 08ozs	383lbs 04ozs
2nd	Peg 1	Keith Ashby	148lbs 00ozs	234lbs 00ozs	382lbs 00ozs
3rd	Peg 17	Peter Morton	120lbs 00ozs	210lbs 00ozs	330lbs 00ozs
4th	Peg 2	Vic Nugent	133lbs 04ozs	173lbs 04ozs	306lbs 08ozs
5th	Peg 6	Dave Collier	86lbs 12ozs	167lbs 08ozs	254lbs 04ozs
6th	Peg 15	Colin Sharrard	83lbs 08ozs	127lbs 08ozs	211lbs 00ozs
7th	Peg 18	Alan Loader	70lbs 04ozs	101lbs 08ozs	171lbs 12ozs
8th	Peg 8	Tony Roberts	48lbs 00ozs	94lbs 08ozs	142lbs 08ozs
9th	Peg 16	Terry Goff	51lbs 04ozs	89lbs 08ozs	140lbs 12ozs
10th	Peg 19	Graham Manning	63lbs 12ozs	50lbs 04ozs	114lbs 00ozs
11th	Peg 13	Bob Hucker	29lbs 00ozs	62lbs 00ozs	91lbs 00ozs
12th	Peg 4	Judy Hermite	47lbs 00ozs	35lbs 12ozs	82lbs 12ozs
13th	Peg 10	Clive Pritchard	22lbs 00ozs	52lbs 12ozs	74lbs 12ozs
14th	Peg 7	Roger Noakes	23lbs 08ozs	31lbs 00ozs	54lbs 08ozs
15th	Peg 5	Eddie Dobson	19lbs 00ozs	28lbs 08ozs	47lbs 08ozs
16th	Peg 12	Ken Walker	14lbs 00ozs	27lbs 12ozs	41lbs 12ozs
17th	Peg 9	Jim Boase	15lbs 00ozs	25lbs 12ozs	40lbs 12ozs
18th	Peg 11	Rod Turner	9lbs 00ozs	14lbs 00ozs	23lbs 00ozs
19th	Peg 14	Zack Johnson	6lbs 02ozs	13lbs 12ozs	19lbs 14ozs