Hartleylands Farm Fishery. The Reservoir. May 13th, 2006.

Marsh AC club match.

Well what a day!!!!!!!  I was at Hartleylands today on the reservoir to fish a match as a guest of Dave the Fish and the club members of Marsh AC. I've had the pleasure of fishing as the club's guest on a few occasions now and it's always a good day out with plenty of good natured banter amongst the members making for a fun days fishing.

 A glance round the car park revealed I wasn’t the only one guesting today, as Jess & Szabi (jackcatcher & tinkerbelle), Terry (wily coyote) appeared, and a brief walk round the reservoir revealed that the Carp’s thoughts had turned to Lurrrrrrrrrrve as they thrashed around in the marginal reeds spawning which could make for a challenging days fishing today.
Draw time saw me get peg 20 in the far corner where the inlet pipe comes in. The initial plan was to fish the baggin waggler as it had produced well for me on a previous visit to the venue with Terry the previous month, with the option of fishing paste in the margins later on.

At the all in, I immediately fed 3pints of hemp into each margin in an attempt to draw the Carp in and hold them there, then I went out with the Baggin wag. An hour in and despite recasting every 60 seconds to get plenty of bait in I only had 3 small Carp to show for it. The wind was blowing from left to right and into my bank and I was having problems with the presentation, so decided to have a look at the margin.

Out with a bit of paste into the left hand margin, and almost straight away the float buried and a plump little Common of around 3lbs was soon in the net. I started to put a few together but was having trouble with liners, it seemed that there were to many fish in the swim despite me relying purely on struck off paste to do any feeding.

Jess wandered up to try and gather a few tips, but all I could advise was to stick at it, as trying to perfect paste fishing is hard enough, without the added complication of getting used to a pole for the 1st time in a match, which is what Jess was trying to do.

Dave arrived with a welcome hot pie from the farm shop at around 1pm, and shortly after disaster struck. I had latched into a very decent double that appeared jet propelled and it managed to bottom out Red Hydro. Something had to give and unfortunately it was the number 4 section with a BANG followed by a rather loud expletive. The reservoir is deep and all to soon the top kit and what was left of the number 4 was re-enacting The Titanic. Why is Malc never around when you need him????

With no spare number 4 with me it was out with the margin pole to resume once I had calmed down, and slowly started to get a few more by alternating between the left and right hand margins.

With an hour to go Dave wandered up from 2 pegs down to see how I was doing, and ponder whether he should stick with the paste for the last hour.
My swim was getting stronger & stronger and I took my empty silvers net out and replaced it with another carp net as I was pretty sure that there were a good few fish in the 1st one.

The last hour went well with fish coming from both margins, until with 5 mins to go, another lump took off and just kept going!!!!. Something had to give and this time it was the dual core that the kit was rigged up with, and that was it for the match as far as I was concerned.

Weigh in time and Paul the bailiff arrived to do the honours. John on peg 1 (the willow) got things started with a 50lbs+ net, Terry on peg 8 with another despite protesting that he’d struggled. Colin was well up with a 60lb+ net and the lad next to him just missed out on 50lbs by ounces.

I was next up and I pulled my 2nd net first, which weighed 45lbs, not bad for 55 minutes fishing. Pulling up the other net I realised that I would need a hand, and sure enough there was over 100lbs of fish in there!!!
My total weight came out at 152lbs 4ozs, and represents my best ever weight in a match. To top it off Paul (The Bailiff) told me it was the best weight from the Reservoir so far this year.

Tony, next peg down also manage a 100lb+ bag at 107lbs though he had taken most of his fish on corn whereas I had had all mine on paste bar the 3 that I had on the Baggin Wag at the start.

Next up was Dave the Fish with a 70lb+ bag, a third of which came in the last hour as he stuck with the paste.

Finally we got to Jess & Szabi and while Jess managed a creditable 30lb bag in his 1st match with a pole, however Szabi inevitably beat him with a 40lb bag.

So there we are a smashing days fishing (in more ways than one) in excellent company.
Finally a BIG THANK YOU to Dave and the lads & lasses of Marsh AC for allowing me to join them, a pleasure as always and I look forward to doing it again if they’ll allow me.

1st	Peter Morton             (Guest)	152lb 04oz
2nd	Tony Roberts	107lb 13oz
3rd	Colin Sharrard	71lb 04oz
4th	Dave Collier	64lb 15oz
5th	Gareth Stevens	57lb 03oz
6th	John Holdsworth	56lb 03oz
7th	Chris Withall	55lb 10oz
8th	Terry Goff                (Guest)	53lb 09oz
9th	Dave Wormall	43lb 12oz
10th	Szabi                        (Guest)	41lb 13oz
11th	Jim Boase	37lb 05oz
12th	Jess Brind                 (Guest)	34lb 10oz
13th	Roger Noakes	31lb 07oz
14th	Judy Hermite	27lb 12oz
15th	Martin Hucker	26lb 06oz
16th	Billy Smith	20lb 13oz
17th	Zack Johnson	7lb 12oz