Manor Farm Leisure. Windmill Lake. August 12th, 2006.

The JINX Series 2006

Match 5.

Climbing into the car to set off on the 120+ mile trip, it was lashing down, Proper Jinx Series weather for a change. I stopped off in Battersea for breakfast as usual, and by the time I reached the M40 the rain had stopped.
I arrived at Manor Farm around 11am to find Me(simon) already in attendance having had a stroll round Windmill Lake.
Time for a cuppa and a cheeseburger.
Keith arrived with David and the obligatory photo’s of his new granddaughter. Yes that’s right, just in case you didn’t know Keith is now a Granddad.

As the rest arrived we took a stroll round ourselves. Windmill is the most established of the lakes on the complex with a couple of islands and features to fish to in most pegs and a good spread of depths from 5-12 feet. However it was very obvious that there was a fair bit of water missing with all the pegs short of the water!!! the level must be about 3 feet down on normal.

The draw as ever on Jinx matches was late as Malc rolled in past noon and went to peg out as with only 20 of us fishing we could leave out a few tight pegs. At least you can park behind or close to the majority of pegs so it’s not to much of a struggle.
I ended up with peg 8 with Royst on peg7 to my left for company and Eric (ejayar) next down on peg 6. To my right on peg 9??? None other than THE JINX himself.

The all in came at 1·30 pm and I was nowhere near ready having made a complete mess of trying to set up a pellet waggler, putting the line through the legs on one eye and then having corrected that finding a wind-knot in the line. Other rigs were just a top2 and a top3 as there was plenty of water straight in front. Grey skies held a promise of rain while a blustery wind threatened to make presentation difficult for those of us on the more exposed pegs. At least we could set up close to the water on our side, while opposite they had to set up on their platforms as can be seen by this photo…
Really the fishing was reasonably simple feeding 4mm pellet and fishing paste soon started producing pasty sized carp, much to Malc’s disgust as he doesn’t count these as real fish.

Royst was to be heard beating himself up on the next peg as he struggled to get to grips with trying to fish paste, struggling to hit the bites and then loosing some of those that he managed to hook.

A couple of hours in and I was sure I heard a “crack” and sure enough here was a top3 and part of a No4 belonging to Eric going down like the Titanic with a Carp attached.This forced Eric into fishing a top3 for the rest of the match as he didn’t have a spare No4 (well he did, but didn’t remember till the end of the match)

Needless to say there was a bit of banter between Malc and myself during the match, one of the main topics being Hydrolastic. “Just point it at the fish and watch it come back to you” what a load of BO***CKS. “Pump it and lift to lock it” That’s why Malc had to stand on his box to net a 2lb’er I suppose.

I kept catching sporadically all through the day, I even had a look at the pellet waggler, getting a Carp and a Chub, but the wind made presentation to awkward, so I stayed on a top2 for the rest of the match.

2½hrs in and a stomach churning stench wafted to my nostrils, Malc had got his cat meat out!!!!!!!!
Now this hadn’t been kept in a tin but had been fermenting in a plastic bag in his car for gawd knows how long!!!! He even reckoned there were things moving in it but I wasn’t about to go and take a look.
With about an hour to go David A popped up for a chat, having resigned himself to forking out another £1 to Gem (The Minx) who was fishing her 1st JINX match. Royst was still muttering about never fishing paste again and a look further up the bank revealed Matt catching at a far steadier rate than anyone else, while Bevan Boy(Brian) had been steadily catching most of the day as had been Dirk on the peg to Brian’s right.
6·30pm and weigh in time and the scales reveal 69lbs 4ozs and a pleasing section win for me .
Further round Matt puts an unbeatable 107lbs onto the scales for the win on the day, having fished paste and slop up in the water.
Moving round The Minx had done more than enough to part David from another £1. Dirk managed a very creditable 92lbs (just missing out on a Jinx Ton again) for 2nd to pip Brian’s 83lbs 3rd place weight, in the process winning the section, thus ensuring that the series was kept alive to the last Match at Rolf’s.

1st	Matt Nutt	107lb 00oz
2nd	Dirk Williams	92lb 12oz
3rd	Brian Bevan	83lb 12oz
4th	Peter Morton	69lb 04oz
5th	Eric Robathan	65lb 00oz
6th=	Dave Moore	55lb 00oz
6th=	Mark Causer	55lb 00oz
8th	Geoff Eggison	52lb 00oz
9th=	Malc Doyle	46lb 04oz
9th=	Jimmy L	46lb 04oz
11th	Roy Ravenhill	44lb 04oz
12th	Tim Westmoreland	44lb 00oz
13th	Keith Ashby	43lb 00oz
14th	Steve Wilson	30lb 08oz
15th	Gemma Doyle         (Guest)	27lb 08oz
16th	Nick Williams	23lb 00oz
17th	Ant Haywood	22lb 08oz
18th	Derek Robathan     (Guest)	10lb 00oz
19th	Simon Rowley	7lb 00oz
20th	Dave Ashby	6lb 04oz

So next up it’s the Final round of the series at Rolf’s. How will it all turn out? We’ll see on Saturday 9th September.