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.