Hartleylands Farm Fishery. Nick’s Lake. May 12th, 2012.

Marsh AC club match.

It’s off down to Hartleylands Fishery at Cranbrook in Kent for what should have been an Inter-club match against Morefax AC but unfortunately they haven’t been able to get a team together so it’s just a regular club match today. However as we booked the whole of Nick’s Lake we’ve invited a few guests along so hopefully everyone will have a decent day. A glance out of the window offered a glimpse of what promised to be a decent day weather wise, so after taking care of the cats and swigging a couple of cups of coffee the kit was loaded into the car and off I went.

First stop was the Knoxbridge Café to take care of breakfast, Mick the Chippy and grand daughter Rosie had just arrived as I pulled up and we entered to find that Keith and Mick already there and waiting for breakfast after their trip down from Milton Keynes. John. Martin and Zack weren’t far behind and once breakfast was taken care of we made our way down to the fishery for the draw.

The usual banter was flying around as we waited. Lee was there, the sole Morefax angler who could make it, so he would be fishing as a guest along with Gary who was Chris’s guest today and fishing his first match for about 30 years. There were two areas I wanted to draw today, either the spit (pegs 7-9) or the mid twenties. Into the bag and the drawing hand didn’t co-operate leaving me with peg 16, not where I really wanted to be.

Making my way round to the peg with my gear I found that Rod had peg 13 and Al was on peg 14, while Martin had 17 and Jim 18. You can see where everyone else was pegged on the peg plan below ……

Settling into my peg it was a question of sorting out a plan of attack. The obvious approach was method feeder to the island, but it only ever seems to produce small carp of around a pound and if I’m honest it’s a style of fishing that bores me to tears, so today I was going to target the bigger fish that tend to lurk around the margins so I set up four top kits. Two had Nick Gilbert’s handmade NG Power Pencil’s, 0·4 g made up on on 0·18 Ultima power match straight through to size 16 Kamasan B911X’s for a line in front at 6mtrs where I had around 4 feet of water, while the other 2 were 0.2g NG Edger’s again on 0·18 Ultima power match straight through to size 16 Kamasan B911X’s for the margins where I had around 2½ft of water. I also set up a pellet waggler should I see fish moving around up in the water. Bait was my usual combination of 6mm coarse pellet for feed and the hook along with some 8mm’s, sweetcorn and 6mm GOT Rippers as alternative hookers.

With around 15 minutes to the All-In I took a little stroll. Al had set up to fish long and shallow on the pole along with a method feeder and pellet waggler ……

and I found Lee down on peg 7 with a big grin on his face and itching to get started……

So at 10am Dave called the All-In, a pot of pellet onto the 6mtr line and a handful down both margins was followed by a banded 8mm out to the 6mtr line, Sport was far from instant though and a good 10 minutes passed before I had my first bite which I promptly missed. Al had gone straight out on the method and was soon into a run of small carp, but apart from him sport seemed to be pretty slow up our end of the lake.

 My second bite produced a feisty little mirror of around 1½lbs so at least I was off the mark, but my next couple of fish were small skimmers and the first hour saw me add just another 3 small carp to my nets. The second hour was a little better, but only just with another 6 small carp to show for my efforts, but at least the sun was shining allowing me to ditch the fleece and sit comfortably in a polo shirt for the first time this year.

 However I was getting nowhere fast, while Al was still catching on the method, although he was complaining that fish were knocking off the groundbait as soon as the method hit the water, so I decided it may be time to get the feeder rod out. However I rigged it with a small cage feeder as opposed to the method, and was going to feed dampened 6mm’s in an attempt to stop it getting ragged. So with a couple of pints of pellets damped down I took a stroll while the pellets soaked.

Simon had started on the feeder, but it hadn’t really produced for him so he had reverted to the pole in attempt to find some action ……

Next up was Keith, another who’d started on the feeder but reverted to the pole and while he insisted that he wasn’t really getting to grips with it he was soon into a carp as we chatted……

Clive was looking a little happier with things today fishing the bush to his right and soon had plenty of elastic streaming out of his top kit, and the culprit a carp that he’d foul hooked in the tail soon found its way to his waiting net ……

Next up was Tony, back with us today having missed the Rayne Lodge match, he was targeting his left hand margin and seemed to be reasonably pleased with his progress, while down on peg 26 Rosie was having a fine old day in fact she was having such a good time that Grandad Mick had stopped fishing himself and contented himself with being Rosie’s Ghillie for the day……

Round to peg 31 and Mick W was being his usual laid back self and although he was being a bit cagey about how he was doing the large tail pattern by his float when he dropped his rig in rather gave the game away that he was probably sitting on a good few fish ……

On the next peg Chairman Dave reckoned he was having a similar day to me (I won’t call it a Grueller as I know one of my readers would take issue with me on this) but having returned from a stroll of his own had managed a couple of quick fish on paste down the margin ……

It was pretty much the same story until I got round to the point where I found Lee targeting his margin and getting among a few carp to keep him happy with his progress.

Kevin was happily fishing the feeder on peg 8 and having one of his best days of the year so far ……

Terry was also having a decent day on peg 9 although he’s lost a couple of lumps during the morning that just didn’t want to play ball and as I made my way back to my peg Al was giving the method a rest, and seeing if he could find some action on the pole line…

Back at my peg, and with the feeder loaded and a banded 8mm on the hook it was out to the island. Within 30 seconds the tip wrapped round and a regulation 1lb carp was heading to the net, this rapidly became eight in eight casts forcing Martin to get his feeder rod into the action. For the next couple of hours fish came regularly and with around an hour to go I had 50 carp in the nets. The trouble was they were like peas in a pod, all around the 1lb mark and I wasn’t enjoying it so with an hour to go the feeder rod was up the bank and I spent that final hour looking for some lumps in the margins. However it wasn’t to be, they just weren’t there and I only added another half a dozen small carp to the nets before Dave called the All-Out at 4pm.

Packing my gear away I felt that I had something approaching 60lbs to show for my efforts. I would almost certainly have topped the ‘Ton’ if I’d fished the feeder all match, but I wouldn’t have enjoyed it as I like to have something larger to target nowadays. I was pretty sure that Al had won the match though as it had suited his style of fishing as he just likes to be busy and doesn’t mind what he’s catching as long as he keeps busy, and he’d certainly been that today.

When I caught up with the weigh-in they had just weighed Lee in with 105¾lbs and judging by his smile he was happy with that. Kevin had 63lbs and Terry 73½lbs. Rod had 11½lbs while Al certainly had been busy recording a fine 176½lbs. Next up my estimate proved to be almost spot on with 59¾lbs. Martin managed just 13½lbs and Jim 38lbs. Simon had tipped back as he’d had to leave early. Keith had managed 85½lbs but Clive topped that with 113lbs while Tony put 106½lbs on the scales. Mick was a very proud Grandad when Rosie weighed in with a fine 77lbs, “its just like catching roach on the canal Grandad, but bigger“. Mick W bagged ‘The Milton Keynes Nugget‘ today with 113lbs but did himself no favours beating Chairman Dave’s 51¾lbs from the next peg. Graham managed a level 40lbs to Zack’s 23½lbs and John rounded things off with 39¼lbs.

So back to the car park for the results and Al had taken the win today, while Clive and Mick W had tied for second. The sections today were won by Al, Lee, Clive and Mick W. Overall just over 1250lbs of fish were weighed in, making an average of just over 66lbs per angler. Not a bad day I think you’ll agree.

 

Position	Peg	Angler		Weight
1st	Peg 14	Al Loader		176lbs 08ozs
2nd=	Peg 23	Clive Pritchard		113lbs 00ozs
2nd=	Peg 31	Mick Wright		113lbs 00ozs
4th	Peg 24	Tony Roberts		106lbs 08ozs
5th	Peg 7	Lee Rose	Guest	105lbs 12ozs
6th	Peg 21	Keith Ashby		85lbs 08ozs
7th	Peg 26	Rosie	Guest	77lbs 00ozs
8th	Peg 9	Terry Goff		73lbs 08ozs
9th	Peg 8	Kevin Loveland		63lbs 00ozs
10th	Peg 16	Peter Morton		59lbs 12ozs
11th	Peg 32	Dave Collier		51lbs 12ozs
12th	Peg 34	Graham Manning		40lbs 00ozs
13th	Peg 37	John Holdsworth		39lbs 04ozs
14th	Peg 18	Jim Boase		38lbs 00ozs
15th	Peg 4	Gary Luck	Guest	36lbs 00ozs
16th	Peg 2	Chris Withall		31lbs 08ozs
17th	Peg 35	Zack Johnson		23lbs 08ozs
18th	Peg 17	Martin Hucker		13lbs 08ozs
19th	Peg 13	Rod Turner		11lbs 08ozs
20th	Peg 20	Simon Watkins		DNW