Alders Farm. The Match Lake. April 8th, 2007.

TalkAngling.co.uk Forum Match.

At the back end of December last year Keith aka Gandhi had offered to organise a match for the members of the TalkAngling website who had expressed an interest in fishing at Alders Farm, and is often the way with these things the 20 places were soon filled. I made sure I got my name down for this one as I hadn't fished there before, but had heard plenty of good reports about the venue. As with most of these type of events those with allegiances to more than one site ended up being involved, but that just adds to the banter and fun on the day.

A nice smooth journey from South London found me arriving in the car park by 7·30am, closely followed by MarkC, Royst and Eric.The biggest shock however was the arrival of Malc (The Jinx) and daughter Gemma (The Minx) a whole hour before the draw !!!! Soon it was time to dip the nets and face “The Hill” down to the Match Lake and a waiting breakfast, and I have to say that it’s a top breakfast that really sets you up for the day.

9am and draw time and a £1 side bet was agreed with The Minx before peg 3 stuck to my hand, a nice short walk. A quick chat with a couple of the GOT anglers saw my plan of attack formulated for the 5 hours ahead and I was soon settled in with Chris BT for company on peg 2 and Phil Young aka Madd on peg 4.
The plan was to be fishing on the deck at 12mtrs where it was about 3ft deep and to keep pinging a few pellets in to see if they would come up later while feeding a line under the bush to my left where hopefully a few lumps would show later. Bait wise I went with a mix of GOT expanders and soft hookers with 4mm hard feed pellets.

At the all in I put a handful under the bush and 2 pots of pellet out on the 12mtr line before going straight out over it. Within a minute I’d bumped one but next put in came back with a nice chunky Mirror around the 2lb mark.

Looking over to the other side I could see  Mick Wilkinson taking in the sun in his shorts and Matt stripped to the waist while I was shielded from the sun by the bush to my left and with the wind blowing towards me sat shivering in bib & brace and fleece, even Malc remarked on it when he came down on one of his customary wanders.
Match wise it proved to be a bit frustrating as I suffered runs of unhittable bites and a number of foulhookers. Laying a couple of inches of line on the deck, or moving up off the deck appeared to have no effect, with the fish only wanting it at dead depth and nothing showing under the bush. Numbers wise Chris and I probably had the same number of fish, but his appeared to be a better stamp.

Weigh in time rolled round at 3pm and it was noticeable that the usual pegs hadn’t produced while normally unfancied ones had and this was put down to the fact that ours was the 3rd match on the venue in 3 days. Never the less with a total weight of 1184lbs 12ozs weighed in between 20 anglers averaging out at just under 60lbs per peg it goes to show what a good venue Alders is.
Winner on the day was Vic Nugent who had 47 carp making up his winning bag of 111lbs 12ozs.
 

Many Thanks to Keith for organising the day, I certainly enjoyed it and will be back next Saturday to fish Matt Nutt’s Charity Match in aid of Disabled Angler.Co.Uk .

1st	Peg 38	Vic Nugent	111lbs 12ozs
2nd	Peg 5	Simon Edwards	100lbs 07ozs
3rd	Peg 23	Roy Ravenhill	82lbs 03ozs
4th	Peg 18	Gary Thorpe	79lbs 13ozs
5th	Peg 28	Trevor Price	70lbs 06ozs
6th	Peg 36	Keith Ashby	70lbs 04ozs
7th	Peg 4	Phil Young	69lbs 14ozs
8th	Peg 17	Mark Causer	68lbs 00ozs
9th	Peg 2	Chris BT	67lbs 04ozs
10th	Peg 32	Matt Nutt	61lbs 06ozs
11th	Peg 8	Tony Walsh	58lbs 12ozs
12th	Peg 3	Peter Morton	57lbs 08ozs
13th	Peg 29	Mick Wilkinson	54lbs 04ozs
14th	Peg 7	Malc Doyle	51lbs 13ozs
15th	Peg 1	Pete Thompson	50lbs 06ozs
16th	Peg 6	Rob Bailey	47lbs 04ozs
17th	Peg 20	Eric Robathan	32lbs 15ozs
18th	Peg 27	Gemma Doyle	25lbs 01ozs
19th	Peg 21	David Ashby	13lbs 13ozs
20th	Peg 34	John Kingfisher	11lbs 11ozs