Rolf’s Lake. Holton. Oxfordshire. May 20th, 2006.

The JINX Series 2006

Match 1.

It's the first match of this years Jinx Series today, so it was into the car for the 60mile trip to todays venue Rolf's Lake. I had arranged to meet up with a few of the lads in the services on the M40 beforehand and around 11·30 we made our way down to Rolf’s.
Once in the car park it was soon obvious that nothing had changed and that yet again The Jinx Series was going to be a monumental festival of p*ss taking & fun.
Nick had kindly sorted some shirts for the series and here’s the proof……..

I was a little taken aback at the draw to receive a presentation from Malc! however the contents of the envelope set the tone for the day! A set of Lime Green pants with no arse in them. (Maria says they’ll avoid the skidmarks at least!!!) and No I don’t have a photo of them, but I’m sure someone has.

So draw done and off to our respective pegs. A nice short 5 yard walk for me to peg 30. Rolf has just started rebuilding the pegs and this is the first one he’s completed, Nice new platform and steps down to it, a real armchair job. To my right was Dan who didn’t look to happy as he had a few bad memories of being pegged next to me at Rolf’s last year, and to my left I was a little concerned to see Pete Thompson (quietman), who has probably spent more time than most at Rolf’s over the years and has a pretty good idea of what makes the place tick.

Due to changes to rules and pellets available at Rolf’s this year, a few questions have sprung up over the best way to approach things. I had been a couple of times already this season and had frankly struggled trying to come to terms with it, so for this match I decided to go with what I know, and that was to fish 6mm GOT expanders over loose fed hemp, at a distance I could throw the feed to, hopefully keeping things nice and simple.

As usual with The Jinx matches things were running a bit late and the all in came at 1·30, called by my good self as Malc didn’t have a watch with him.

Almost straight away David on peg 28 seemed intent on taking the place apart, his 1st fish took a bare hook as he shipped out a pot of pellet and every time I looked around his black hydro seemed to be streaming out.

Things were not quite so hectic for the rest of us, with a few skimmers and the odd carp just keeping things ticking over, though Pete did manage to bag a specimen perch.
Slowly but surely things started to improve though, Paul (Mr Buckethead aka Turkish) Finally managed to catch a carp at Rolf’s, not just the one either………
MarkC was putting a few together on peg 32 including some perch in a pretty mixed bag………
Nick (polepot) came wandering along, hoping for some clues as he was having a bit of a mare, Having drawn peg 34 it seemed that everyone had given him different advise, and if that wasn’t bad enough he was trying to get to grips with using a new pole and Hydro for the 1st time. To top it all off he had been further traumatised by watching Malc strip down to his underpants (thankfully a site I missed) and leap in to retrieve a top kit.
By mid afternoon the carp seemed to settle on my feed and I started to put a few together,

David was still in regular action although it was hard to judge the stamp of his fish as he was on Black Hydro.
Matt across on peg 12 was putting together a decent bag having started to sneak a few lumps out from down the edge, you could tell they were decent fish as periodically he could be seen climbing onto his box in an attempt to net them …
Finally the all out came at 6·30 just as I had connected to a final carp that was foulhooked in the tail, a few anxious moments while I tried to get his propeller out of the water to subdue it followed before I finally managed to net it.

Packing up and taking my gear back prior to the weigh-in, I heard a sound that I couldn’t quite place till I realised it was coming from Dai’s car!!!!!!!! The engine was running, and had been running for the whole match!!!!!!!! Luckily Dai still had ½ a tank of fuel and at least it was nicely warmed up for a quick get away.

Back for the weigh-in and my 50lbs odd of weighers with what was in my net gave me 125lbs overall which was enough for my section as David had 110lbs (more fish, but a smaller stamp) still allowing both of us to join the exclusive 100lbs+ JINX CLUB. I believe Antwood also joined us on his very 1st Jinx match and Matt took the overall honours on the day with a fine 139lb bag from the little used peg 12.

Finally as this was Churt’s Memorial Match, the trophy should have been presented to Matt, but Malc had forgotten it!!!!!!!! No Surprise there then.

However SteveW and myself did FINALLY get our hands on the Pairs Trophy we won last series………
…….however as it has to go away for engraving that’s probably be the last we’ll see of it.

So that’s it, 1 down, 5 to go and on to Engine Pool, It should be fun, but with The Jinx you never know.

Individual Results on the day were as follows

1st	Matt Nutt	139lb 02oz
2nd	Peter(Mugger)Morton	125lb 00oz
3rd	Dave Ashby	110lb 02oz
4th	Anthony Haywood	108lb 10oz
5th	Paul Roberts	96lb 11oz
6th	Brian Bevan	86lb 12oz
7th	Eric Robathan	84lb 12oz
8th	Pete Thompson	84lb 00oz
9th	Nick Bryan	82lb 02oz
10th	Steve Wilson	76lb 08oz
11th	Simon Rowley	76lb 00oz
12th	Mark Bennett	75lb 00oz
13th	Dirk Williams	60lb 14oz
14th	Keith(Gandhi)Ashby	60lb 04oz
15th	Neil McMurran	60lb 02oz
16th	Dave Moore	57lb 11oz
17th	Nick Jones	50lb 02oz
18th	Malc(The Jinx)Doyle	45lb 12oz
19th	Andy Felton	40lb 00oz
20th	Geoff Palmer	30lb 08oz
21st	Nick Watkins-Price	29lb 15oz
22nd	Nick Williams	25lb 00oz
23rd	Dai Thomas	22lb 08oz
24th	Mark Causer	18lb 03oz
25th	Dan Thomas	15lb 00oz
26th	Geoff Eggison	13lb 00oz