Private Fishery, East Sussex. April 27th, 2003.

Hawthorne AC

AT Supercup match.

Today was our 2nd round Supercup match. Dartford APS, Holland Anglers and us….. Hawthorne AC. It was at a Private Fishery in East Sussex. Dartford’s choice of venue.
To give you some idea of what we were up against DAPS has 2500 members to draw a team from, Hawthorne has 35 members.

I drew peg 2 on the silver fish lake which has a stream running in and out of it and was forcast to be hard……….. They weren’t wrong…….. It’s a very small lake, more of a pond really, only 11 swims on it, 9 of which were used for three sections of three, the other five sections being on the newer match(carp)lake.
The match started at 9-30am and by about noon I’d managed to put about 5lbs of small Roach and micro Perch in the net fishing a top 2 to a set of pads at 3mtrs.
Then it happened, a dirty brown slick entered the lake, probably washed in off the surrounding fields & roads and killed sport stone dead for me. The last couple of hours were spent punching a waggler out past the discolouration to lure a few more Roach and at the weigh-in 7lbs 10 ozs gave me 2 points for 2nd in section.

Overall we had a disaster with only 1 section win and 2 section seconds.
Dartford went through to the Semi’s and deserved to on a day when by their own admission, the complex fished below expectations.
So good luck to Dartford in the semi, can they qualify for the final and go one better than last year? when they were 2nd in the final.
Hawthorne AC??? we’ll give it another go next season.

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

Maggotdrowning.com

 Day Out.

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.

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.

Willow Park Fishery. Big Lake. April 6th, 2003.

Hawthorne AC club match.

5.55am “RING RING” “It’s Malc, I’m downstairs ,where are you?”“OH GOODNESS IS THAT THE TIME !%*$$$*!!!! YOU GET OFF AND I’LL MEET YOU THERE “

Not the best start to the final club match of the season, so a mad charge round gathering up all the kit and chucking it in the car for the 40 mile trip to Willow Park at Ash Vale, just outside Guildford.
A quick phonecall to the chairman to let him know I’m on my way and to get him to draw for me.

Pulling into the car park just in time to find everyone making their way to their pegs I’m told that I have drawn peg 71 on the bungalow bank of the Main Lake. Now the Main Lake isn’t used much for matches anymore as the carp have grown rather large, much more the territory of the “Boilie & Bivvy Brigade”

As usually befits a Hawthorne match the weather that had been nice and springlike in the SE for the last fortnight, had transformed into a dull grey overcast day with a biting cold North wind that had dropped the temperature more than a couple of degrees.



Well running late and trying to play catchup, I quickly set up my feeder rod with a groundbait feeder so that I would have something to fish with at the start.
What I really wanted to do though was go at it with the pole, as there wasn’t a lot of colour in the water, and I had a feeling that it would be hard, so it was soon out with the pole and a quick plumb up revealed a nice flat area 8ft deep at about 11mtrs.

Now bearing in mind that it was the last match of the season and with everything decided clubwise I decided to attack it, so 6 big balls of Sensas Crazybait Black with a good helping of casters & hemp went in on this line to fish caster or red maggot over the top of it.

Well after about 40mins the first 6oz skimmer was netted and a steady stream of these,along with a couple of better examples continued throughout the whole match.
Four of the lads had close encounters with rather large carp during the course of the day, but the score ended Carp 4-0 Anglers.  Come the end of the match I put 26lbs 10ozs on the scales, which was only beaten by Paul (the club champ) on the end-peg putting 43lbs 2ozs on the scales for 1st place.

So that’s it for another season of club matches, just the 2nd round of the Supercup to be fished on the 27th.
It’s been a good season for the club though with a total of 5122lbs 13ozs being weighed-in during the 17 matches, an average of just over 300lbs per match, with an average of 17 anglers attending each match.