Saturday 26 April 2003

Elphick’s Fishery. Sandwich Lake. April 26th, 2003.

Maggotdrowning.com
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 Day Out.

SandwichLakeElphicksFishery.jpg Sandwich lake at Elphicks. picture by pnm123

This all started out with Geoff asking me a couple of months ago to suggest a venue that he could visit on a free weekend.
As with all harmless requests it soon turned into a mini Fish-in, as when I suggested Elphicks, Geoff realised that he could tie it in with a visit to Mum in Hastings.
Wey Back (Mick) had just joined MD’s and Geoff had established that they had fished in similar areas in the past, and Beebs (Steve) was soon roped in to join the party.
So a thread was posted on the “Fishing Talk” forum (For Wey Back or Beebs) and as these things are prone to do, it developed a life of it’s own.
Soon NoFinPhish (Jason) had decided to accompany Beebs and Martin found himself available to have a crack at a new water. Alan P (Eastangler) then decided that it would be a nice day out for himself and his son Loz P. Newbie Dave the Fish liked the look of it as well and joined in, so we all decided to meet at 7am in the Car Park.

Geoff stayed at my place overnight, and we set off at 6am towards Elphicks.  6.30am and we have come to a grinding halt on the A21, and there we sat for the next 3 hours caught in a 5 mile tailback.

During all this chaos Dave the Fish managed to save a young lady’s blushes by hastily erecting his brolly to shield her as nature called, and as she told us after “It was the most impressive 50 inches” she had ever seen. Meanwhile mobiles were ringing to find out where everyone was, or more correctly wasn’t.
Well the Traffic finally moved and Geoff, Dave and I finally arrived, just in time to see Beebs landing a nice Carp of 13lbs weighed by Martin. Introductions were made and swims were picked and finally we were ready for the off. Due to the recent dry spell the lake was a good foot below it’s normal level and all those that had chosen the far side platforms could find was about 18 inches of water. I took advantage of peg 11 being free and had about 3 feet on the pole line.

Sport it has to be said was far from hectic, but everyone was getting the odd 1 or 2 examples of the various species that inhabit the lake.
I had got off the mark with a Tench of about 3lbs and a few Rudd caught on an expander pellet. About noon Joe32 put in an appearance as agreed to collect some tackle that various members of the site have donated to help him get a youth project off the ground. This was taken as an excuse to adjourn to Sally’s Reel Food Bar in the car park for another round of chat, tea’s & burgers.


BurgerVan.jpg picture by pnm123
As with all these sort of days, fishing seems to take a back seat, but during the afternoon I managed to bring my total upto 12 Tench (6 green & 6 golden) with a few skimmers thrown in for good measure.

Meanwhile Geoff had got himself a nice Golden Orfe and was adding to his species count………

Martin was coming to terms with a peg considerably shallower than he is used to on the drains, as was a pal of his (Reg) who had come down with Martin for the day.



Wey Back and Dave the Fish were engaged in various states of relaxation as this whole get-together thing with the Maggotdrowners was a first (but hopefully not the last) for them ………


Alan P and his son Loz were suffering with a definite lack of water in their swims and so moved onto the next Lake (Kettles) in the afternoon and things picked up a bit for them with Alan finally being able to christen his new pole, though young Loz took things easy as he was suffering a headache.
Beebs having had his generous gift for Uncle Geoff refused (A Welsh Baseball Cap) split his time between the 2 lakes while Jason soldiered on.

All too soon it was time for me to leave so I made my way around to bid my farewells. As usual the fishing seemed to have come 2nd and in truth the lake didn’t fish as well as it can, but it seemed as if everyone had enjoyed themselves, and Uncle Geoff even managed to add a Crucian to his tally as I bid him farewell.
Me? I had a blast, Thanks to all the lads that came down, Hope you all enjoyed yourselves, we must do it again sometime.





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