Colemans Cottage Fishery. Wood Lake. September 15th, 2012.

Marsh AC club match.

 Essex is the destination for me today with another Marsh AC club match at Colemans Cottage on Wood Lake. It’s a venue that’s always popular with the club members and today is our second visit this year so hopefully it will provide a good days fishing for the lads. I was awake before the alarm went off and soon had the cats fed and a couple of cups of coffee drunk before loading up the car before sunrise. I couldn’t help noticing how cold it felt though, the car thermometer registering just 11°C and for the first time in a while I put the car heater on as I set off. It’s a great time to be travelling though with little traffic on the roads and as I cleared the Dartford Tunnel the sun was just rising, promising a lovely day ahead weather wise.

I pulled into the fishery car park at just past 7am and indeed it appeared that I was the first one to arrive. A quick look at the lake revealed that the level was down from our previous visit with the platforms a good 2 feet clear of the water.

 Gerry and Jayne has opened the lodge so the first order of the day was one of Jayne’s large breakfasts  to set me up for the day ahead. Lee was next to arrive, he was guesting today and is always good company so we were soon catching up as breakfast was consumed and the others arrived. I then got a phone call from Terry, his car wouldn’t start so he wouldn’t be joining us today.

With breakfast out of the way Dave soon had the money collected and got the draw out of the way. Peg 27 was to be mine for the match, not one I was familiar with , so gathering up my kit I set off to get acquainted with it.

Arriving at the peg it turned out that I had Dave on peg 25 for company on my right and young Zack to my left on peg 29, with Lee and Chris opposite on pegs 13 and 15.

The carp run to a decent size in Wood Lake and the Barbel are getting bigger all the time so I made up 3 rigs, the first for straight out in front at 5mtrs where I had around 3½ft of water was a 0·4g NG XT Mugger HD on 0·18 Ultima power match straight through to size 16 Kamasan B911Xs while the other 2 were for the margin while the other 2 were 0·2g NG Springer Sampson Margin’s on on 0·18 Ultima power match with size 14 Kamasan B911X’s. Feed would be a mix of corn and damp 4mm pellet while hookbaits would be a mix of pellet, corn and some GOT Baits paste.

10am and Dave called the All-In and I fed both margin lines then dropped a banded 6mm over a few loose pellets on the 5mtr line. A few of the lads were into quick fish but I wasn’t one of those and 30 minutes in I still hadn’t had as much as a bite so I fed a full pot of pellet and corn to see if it would tempt anything in. Well after about 5 minutes the swim started fizzing like a jacuzzi but the bites still refused to come . However Tony over on peg 11 had started to put one or two fish together ……

Finally after around 45 minutes the float slowly slid away and a gentle lift saw a pleasing amount of elastic stretching from the top kit, The fish was quickly subdued and slid over the landing net, a common of around 3½lbs to finally get me off the mark.

 Back out but it appeared that it had been a solitary fish as no more bites were forthcoming, a bit more feed and a few more bubbles but no bites despite varying the depth and the baits I just couldn’t buy another bite.

Chris was opposite on peg 15 and I’ve often taken the micky out of him telling him that his kit looks like a throw back to the 70′s but he was definitely having the last laugh on me today as he started to take fish from his peg while I could only look on enviously …

After 90 minutes I noticed a couple of carp moving in the left hand margin, normally I would have left it longer but I was already getting desperate so dropped a banded 8mm in there. The float buried almost straight away and I connected with a big fish that powered off towards Zack, but almost straight away the rig came pinging back with a large scale on the hook.

A look down the other margin with corn looked like being no more productive until the float vanished from sight, yielding a common around the 5lb mark to add to my meagre total. Lee was having no such problems over on peg 13 however though he was surprised at just how hard the fish fought, giving his hydro a good work out ……

Another try on the 5mtr line finally produced a couple of F1′s after around half an hour but again nothing followed them. I could see odd fish constantly moving through the swim in front of me but nothing appeared to want to settle. Was it because the water was down and I was sitting so high up above the water? had the cold nights upset things? I couldn’t work it out today whatever it was.

Chris’s guest Gary Luck was over on peg 13 and it looked as if he was pretty much in the same boat as me, as I could see his swim fizzing but only producing the odd fish for him ……

Back to the margins for me and I finally managed to tempt another couple of carp from the left hand side, but in all honesty I was going nowhere fast. Around 2pm Chrissy arrived with Dave’s two grandchildren Lily and Alfie who both wanted to catch a fish with Grandad. It’s a good job they hadn’t arrived earlier or they would have undoubtedly battered me today.

More in desperation than anything else I took my feeder rod out and decided to give that a go, but after 3 casts that tangled and snapped off, pretty much summing up the match for me in a nutshell. Meanwhile young Alfie was getting well into helping Grandad catch and land his fish  ……

John (tutu) was suffering a similar match to mine over on peg 21 but as the match drew to a close started to find one or two fish from his margin ……

I battled on with the margins and actually managed to get another couple of carp before Dave called the All-Out at 4pm.
 I have to say that I was glad to hear the whistle today, 6 hours for just 8 fish for around 30lbs wasn’t the outcome I’d expected and with hindsight I got it horribly wrong, getting side tracked by fish I could see in the margins despite them not wanting to co-operate today.

It took me a while to get the kit packed away meaning that I didn’t follow the Weigh-In round as usual and when it got round to me Keith was leading with 118lbs from peg 3 from Tony with 88lbs. Dave with Lily and Alfie’s help had 85½lbs. My fish weighed a level 30 lbs and Zack had 54½lbs leaving me like a bit of cod “battered both sides. The Weigh-In moved on at pace as it does at Colemans and I made my way back to the car park with my kit and loaded it away.

Back at the lodge for the results and Jean had asked Jayne to lay on a buffet complete with Birthday Cake ……

…for Kevin’s Birthday (which was on Sunday) and I have to say it offered the best bites of the day as far as I was concerned.

Dave announced the results after everyone had tucked in and the winner today was Al with a fine 139lbs from peg 35. Keith was second with 118lbs and regained the MK Nugget from Mick and Tony was 3rd on the day.

The next club match is at The Private Lake in East Sussex in a couple of weeks time, but before that next Saturday is the penultimate round of The Jinx Series at Rolf’s Lake which will hopefully give me the chance to get this match out of my system.

	Peg	Angler		Weight
1st	Peg 35	Al Loader		139lbs 00ozs
2nd	Peg 3	Keith Ashby		118lbs 00ozs
3rd	Peg 11	Tony Roberts		88lbs 00ozs
4th	Peg 25	Dave Collier		85lbs 08ozs
5th	Peg 13	Lee Rose	Guest	75lbs 08ozs
6th	Peg 37	Clive Pritchard		72lbs 08ozs
7th	Peg 23	Mick Wright		71lbs 04ozs
8th	Peg 33	Simon Watkins		65lbs 04ozs
9th	Peg 19	Jim Boase		57lbs 00ozs
10th	Peg 29	Zack Johnson		54lbs 08ozs
11th=	Peg 15	Chris Withall		54lbs 00ozs
11th=	Peg 9	Kevin Loveland		54lbs 00ozs
13th	Peg 39	Eddie Dobson		46lbs 00ozs
14th	Peg 5	Graham Manning		36lbs 00ozs
15th	Peg 21	John Holdsworth		31lbs 00ozs
16th	Peg 27	Peter Morton		30lbs 00ozs
17th	Peg 7	Martin Hucker		29lbs 00ozs
18th	Peg 1	Ron Mannister		21lbs 00ozs
19th	Peg 25	Lily & Alfie Bondeau	Guests	18lbs 08ozs
20th	Peg 17	Gary Luck	Guest	15lbs 08ozs
21st	Peg 31	Tony Watkins	Guest	14lbs 00ozs