Hartleylands Farm, Finches Pond. November 15th, 2003.

Marsh AC club match.

First off  this weekend it was down to Hartleylands Farm to meet Dave the Fish and the lads of Marsh AC for their club match on Finches Pond.

Dave had kindly invited me to come along and fish as a guest of his club, so who was I to refuse.
An 8 am draw in the car park, and a brief chat with Vince (vg1037) the bailiff, who unfortunately wouldn’t be fishing with us, saw the pegs allocated and off we strolled to set up.

Looking down over Finches….

Finches is a lovely intimate little pond, with only about a dozen pegs on it, and nearly everyone was occupied today. I must admit that I had some reservations as to whether it would be able to handle this sort of pressure, as it’s more of a pleasure venue in my eyes.
Still nothing ventured……….the pond itself holds a good head of fish, Carp up to 28lb, including good number of “high doubles”, Roach up to 1½lbs, Skimmers, Perch and Chub up to 4lb, and of course Eric the Eel, who when last caught weighed 7lb.

I arrived at my peg, No4 and was faced with a good 16 mtrs to the far bank cover, possibly the widest swim on the pond, now given the fact that the peg is reached by about 15 steps down through trees and I was only guesting I wasn’t about to spend all day shipping a pole back uphill, so out came the waggler rod (shock horror) mind you I did set up a margin swim to tackle with my margin pole and some swimstim paste.

Peg 4…
Well come the off, and the pace wasn’t exactly electric, and with 5 of us almost fishing the same bit of water, there was plenty of banter especially as Dave was on peg 2 and Colin was on peg 5.
A little further up the pool a few fish started to show after the hour mark, but nobody was setting the place alight, with mostly just small Roach putting in an appearance.
After a while Dave wandered round for yet another chat, by which time I had the margin pole out with a big bit of paste. As we chatted the float did a little dance and decided to vanish and my astonished strike met with an immoveable object, then the rig sprang back with a large scale firmly attached to the hook.
Sympathy isn't on the cards when you fish with these lads and I was sure that I could hear laughter as Dave returned to his peg.
The day was wearing on and it was still all to play for with anyone that managed a good last hour in with a chance.
No more action on the paste, so back out on the waggler to see if a few more roach would play, away went the float and this wasn’t the expected Roach!!!!!
Now on a 2lb bottom and size 20 a little care was called for, and after 5 minutes of supremely skillfull playing a 10lb Mirror Carp was safely in the net ………

and here’s the resulting Carp………

I’d love to say that things picked up from there, but it was not to be, just a few more small Roach for me, but Dave had the good last hour and managed 6 Carp to pick up the win on the day, while my 11½lbs left me somewhere in midfield.

A shy winner on Peg 2…
Still thanks to the lads at Marsh AC for making it an enjoyable day as always, shame about the crash on the A21 though that meant it took me nearly 3 hours to get home. 

Position	Peg	Angler	Weight
1st	Peg 2	Dave Collier	22lbs 00ozs
2nd	Peg 8	Tony Roberts	16lbs 00ozs
3rd	Peg 3	Jim Boase	15lbs 00ozs
4th	Peg 7	Roger Noakes	12lbs 08ozs
5th	Peg 4	Peter Morton  (Guest)	11lbs 02ozs
6th	Peg 5	Colin Sharrard	9lbs 06ozs
7th	Peg 6	Steve Wormall	5lbs 05ozs
8th	Peg 11	Dave Wormall	2lbs 07ozs
9th	Peg 10	Den Lambird	1lbs  02ozs
10th	Peg 12	Malcolm Norman	03ozs
11th	Peg 9	Ken Walker	01oz
12th	Peg 1	Tim Ford	DNW