Framfield Fishery. Spring Lake. August 1st, 2004.

Hawthorne AC club match.

Up with the lark this morning for the drive down to Framfield Park Fishery, just outside the village of Uckfield. The sun was up as I pulled into the car park, promising a second hot day on the trot, Summer must be here at last.

Lots of banter and catching up over a Bacon sandwich and a cuppa as I had missed the last 2 club matches. We were fishing Spring Lake, a noted “bag-up” water down here in the SE, and this had encouraged a good turn out of 23 anglers.

Into the drawbag and it’s the early pegs in the 50′s that everyone wanted, but it was peg 45 for me, not the best of pegs as there’s only a maximum of 3ft of water and the island is out of pole reach at 20mtrs+.

Having already missed 2 club matches and with the prospect of missing at least another 4 during the course of the season, I’ve made up my mind this year to just enjoy the days fishing and I wanted to use today to try and get to grips with fishing paste, a bait that I don’t use very often, and a method that I really need to improve on.

Peg 45.
Plumbing up revealed a change of depth of just 4″ from the margin to 14mtrs and a couple of slurping sounds from the vegetation growing in the left hand margin made my mind up that that would be my main area to fish.

By the time of the all-in there were a good number of fish cruising around but despite a number of anglers targeting them they seemed reluctant to feed. Meanwhile I was sitting on my hands and trying to resist hitting every little dip and dink of the float as hordes of little Roach descended on my paste.
An hour in and the float just buried and the elastic ripped out of the pole as Carp no1, a nice Ghostie of about 3lbs got me off the mark.

The next few hours were what you might call character forming!!!
Lots of tail patterns in the swim with apparent sail away bites being nothing more than liners. Fiddling with the rig and laying about 6″ of line on the deck and cutting back the feed meant that I managed another 9 fish, so that with just over an hour to go I probably had about 25lbs in the net.

Meanwhile news was traveling down that a couple of the lads on the 50′s were sacking up and were in with a chance of doing the ton.
Me? I decided to increase the size of paste that I was fishing from a thumbnail piece to a bit the size of a 10p in the hope that the silvers wouldn’t whittle it completely away before the Carp found it.

Well, whether it was sheer luck or inspiration I’m not sure but it certainly did the trick. The last hour was hectic to say the least as nearly every put in resulted in a sail-away bite and a Carp on the end. I couldn’t get a bait in the water quickly enough and I had them queuing up.

When the scales arrived, sure enough 2 of the lads on the 50′s had recorded tons, Paul (The club champ) with 119lbs 11ozs and Andy with a superb 159lbs 3ozs for a new club record weight.
Me? Thanks to that final hectic hour I managed 80lbs 12ozs which proved to be good enough for 3rd on the day.

The 23 members present managed to put a total of 1151lbs 9ozs on the scales today, representing an average of over 50lbs per man, A cracking days fishing by any standards.

Paste then, Have I cracked it? Probably not, but a fun day that got me thinking about my fishing and definitely something that I shall be using on a more regular basis.