Hartleylands Farm Fishery. The Reservoir. July 10th, 2004.

Maggotdrowning.com

 

Southern Championship.

A rather threadbare turn out of only 8 anglers assembled in the car park at Hartleylands, on a bright sunny morning for the Southern round of the Maggotdrowning.com Individual Knockout Championships that was fished on the Reservoir at Hartleylands Farm just outside Cranbrook in Kent.

Little did we know that we were to experience the full range of weather in the course of the day ranging from warm sunshine to torrential rain, wind, Thunder & lightning and hailstones.
At the draw I was fortunate enough to pull out peg1, that has a small willow overhanging the water and is normally capable of providing a framing weight in matches.

Having fished the reservoir the previous Saturday, I’d already decided that contrary to normal practice, I was going to try a close in attack at around 3mtrs (the length of a power top2) in an effort to put a net of silvers together, but with a strong enough rig to stand a fighting chance with any Carp that put in an appearance.

The top2 was elasticated with yellow Drennan Bungee (rated 10-12) with a straight through rig made up on 0·17 carptek line, a 4X14 Preston PB13 ending in one of the new Fox series2 carp match hooks in a size 18. Bait was my favourite 6mm expanders coated in VDE pellet oil, sweetcorn and ¼inch cubes of luncheon meat that had been soaked in VDE Predator+ overnight. Feed was taken care of with a mix of Swimstim natural and green 3mm pellets.


At the all in, it was a generous handful of pellets under the willow and another straight out at 3mm. 1st put in to the front and the float buried resulting in me getting off the mark with a 3oz Roach, and a top up with a pinch of pellet every put in as I alternated between out front and under the willow kept the bites coming all match.

Periodically I would connect with a Carp and when this happened it was a matter of adding the rest of the pole and letting it play itself out away from the catching area before netting it, thus avoiding wrecking the swim I’d been catching in.
Malc finally managed to sort things out and put a few fish together towards the end of the match ……

but poor Vince’s insider knowledge of the venue rather let him down today as he struggled being pegged between Malc and me, and although he did manage to put a few in the net, it was a case of to little to late……

 

It did get a little lairy in the afternoon when we were treated to a combination of torrential rain accompanied with thunder & lightning (very very frightening) but even during this I managed to keep a few going in the net.

Thankfully it stopped before 4pm when Paul, one of the fishery bailiffs came to do the weigh in for us……

The weights were as follows..................

1st	Peter Morton	61lbs 00ozs
2nd	Malc Doyle	57lbs 02ozs
3rd	Terry Goff	45lbs 05ozs
4th	Chris Cornelius	37lbs 15ozs
5th	Andy Speadbury	32lbs 11ozs
6th	Dave Collier	21lbs 10ozs
7th	Vince Gould	19lbs 04½ozs
8th	Nick Watkins-Price	6lbs 11ozs

Vince very kindly donated a trophy for the winning angler, and here he is presenting it

Finally a word of thanks to Malc & Vince for organising a thoroughly entertaining day and a word of thanks too for Paul Ward (the owner) and his staff at Hartleylands. Once again despite the weather throwing the lot at us, the fishery produced the goods, proving what a consistent fishery Hartleylands is.

Hartleylands Farm Fishery. The Reservoir. July 3rd, 2004.

Today I thought that I had better try and get some practice in for the Maggotdrowning.com Individual Knockout Championships, Southern Qualifier that’s taking place on the Reservoir at Hartleylands next Saturday, but the weather wasn’t looking to good on the drive down, with the odd shower and strong blustery winds.

I arrived at the fishery at 9·30am and seeing that there were no bookings on the reservoir drove straight up there. There were only 3 other anglers fishing. A walk round made me realise why they were tucked into one corner as the wind was really blowing across the water. I suppose I could have toughed it out, but I decided to join the 3 others and dropped into peg 31 right next to the car park.

During discussions with Paul (The Owner) and Vince in the past, the fact that the good head of silver fish present tend to get ignored by most anglers who target the Carp has always come up, and today I fancied seeing just how many of these I could catch. To keep count I was going to drop a pellet into an empty baitbox for each 10 caught. Plumbing up I had 3ft at a top 2 length increasing to 5ft at 8 mtrs. The wind was going to make it uncomfortable to fish any longer, and would probably make for a slower catch rate.

I set up 3rigs, The 1st a top 2 set to fish to hand that would cover all depths, the 2nd at dead depth for 8mtrs and a shallow rig for the same line. Bait was 6mm expanders, cubed meat and sweetcorn. Micro pellet was to be the loose feed.
Starting off I put 2 pots of micro pellet in at 8mtrs and a ½ pot at 3mtrs. Out to 8mtrs with an expander at depth and within a minute the float slid away as a plump Roach of about 6ozs obliged. Bites and fish were pretty constant. All the while a pinch of micros were being flicked into the 3mtr line and my 1st put in on that line after about 45 minutes found that the Roach were waiting. These fish were unmarked and a good average size (6-8ozs) with some examples over the pound.

It must have been solid with roach as in the course of 4hrs only 4 Carp managed to muscle their way in along with a few Skimmers and a solitary Tench of about 3lbs. A fifth Carp finally trashed the to hand rig after about 4½hrs, so it was time to count up the pellets in the baitbox. 31 pellets plus the five Roach caught before the rig went west = 315 silvers, mainly Roach!!!!!!  One hell of a session, it’s at times like this that you wish you could use a keepnet.

After a well earned break for coffee and a sarnie I made another heavier rig up for a last hour targeting the Carp with big cubes of meat. The constant stream of micros had obviously resulted in a good few getting through to the bottom, and I managed another 11 Carp before packing up.
The largest of which is in the photo below. To give you some idea of size the net is a 24inch (2feet) pan. What it doesn’t show is how fat the fish was.

Another day like this next Saturday will more than do me, but as “The Jinx” is fishing it as well, I may be raising my hopes, only to have them dashed. ROLL ON NEXT SATURDAY!!!!!!!