Old Bury Hill. The Estate Lake. September 13th, 2002.

Brother-in-law Chris has just got back into fishing via his boy Fraser (7 years old), after a 15 year lay off, and on the couple of times he has come with me most of the day has been devoted to making sure that Fraser catches.
The other day Chris confessed that he wouldn’t mind a days fishing without Fraser, and that he’d love to catch a Tench as he’d never caught one.
There is only one venue that I could think of to virtually guarantee this, so first port of call was the boat house at Old Bury Hill to pay for our day tickets and collect the punt that would transport us to “The Jungle” on the Estate Lake.

Settling into an area hard up against an uprooted tree, I fed a couple of handfuls of pellets and sweetcorn into mine and Chris’s swims. The sun was already starting to climb and not a cloud in the sky signalled that the early mist would soon burn off.
After about half an hour my waggler vanished, and after a brief tussle a fighting fit male Tench of just over 3lb was safely in the net.

Chris meanwhile was suffering from some lightning fast unhittable bites, which I felt could be due to skimmers.
I could see the frustration in his face, when suddenly the float lifted up and laid flat. “STRIKE”  The rod hooped over as one angry fish sought out the shelter of the bushes that were so close. Fortunately it was unsuccessful, and after 5 mins Chris’s first ever Tench was netted, and at 4lbs 2ozs a great fish to start with ……

Soon however the sun was beating down, and the Tench retreated deep into the shade of the bushes, Chris had a close encounter with a Carp, which sadly for him the Carp won.
Still the Bream continued to feed, nothing huge but large enough to keep Chris happy for the rest of the day.

At the end of the day as we stepped out of the punt, his first words were “When are we coming back ?” I don’t think it will be too long somehow.

Hartleylands Farm Fishery. The Reservoir. September 9th, 2002.

Hawthorne AC club match.

It’s off to Hartleylands Farm for the 8th match of Hawthorne AC’s season today, and as I jumped into the car to make my way down to the fishery the heavens opened, and didn’t let up for the whole trip down until I pulled into the car park.
The fishery at Hartleylands Farm comprises a number of ponds and an irrigation reservoir, which is where we were to fish today.

After the usual welcomes and insults from those fishing today it was time for the draw, thrusting my hand into the draw bag I was rewarded with peg 17, which as it turns out is the very peg I struggled from in this years AT SuperCup match, so not a good start , but in for a penny……

Now there are a lot of Skimmers & Roach present in the reservoir but you really need to target the Carp to frame on the reservoir at this time of year, and if they aren’t in your peg you’ll struggle, which is exactly what I did !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 It didn’t seem to matter what I tried I couldn’t get a sniff of a Carp all day. The only thing that would take my bait were either Skimmers or Roach and at the end my rather meagre weight of 22lbs 3ozs was only good enough for 12th place .
Still some good weights were recorded, The match was won with a weight of 83lbs 14ozs of Carp caught by Paul Ollerenshaw,(The reigning Club Champion) for his 5th win in 8 matches …………

Some nice fish came out, including this one for Don Freeman, a nice plump Mirror Carp of 9lbs 15ozs …………

Not my day today, but it beats the hell out of being at home and decorating. Anyway roll on Friday when I’m taking the brother-in-law Chris out for a days punt fishing at Old Bury Hill in an attempt to get him his first ever Tench.