Holly Farm Fishery. Gils Lake. July 14th, 2007.

The JINX Series 2007

Match 3.

Well after 6 weeks with no fishing due to work commitments it was just good to be getting out for a days fishing, especially as it was with the group of anglers who fish the Jinx Series.
Holly Farm at Ashby Magna in Leicestershire was todays venue, a complex with 3 lakes, Moby, Trotters & Gils, with us fishing on Gils today.

As usual I arrived with plenty of time to spare after a trip of around 100 miles and had a stroll round the venue, bumping into Nick W-P (another early bird) before retiring to the Café for a chat and a coffee with the others as they arrived.
Malc (The Jinx) had suffered yet more car trouble during the week (Total brake failure this time) so he and Gem (The Minx) travelled up with Nick & Brian, meaning that we at least started almost on time for once.

So into the draw bag to be rewarded with peg 7, at least one of the shorter walks from the car park. Now such was the weather today that the 1st 10 pegs had the wind howling from left to right while the rest were sheltered enough to be flat calm.
The peg looked decent enough with the reed fringed far bank being around 13mtrs away and a bit of cover on both sides. For company I had Nick W-P to my left on 8 and Geoff to my right on 6.

I sorted out 2 main lines of attack, 1 right over against the reeds and the other at 7mtrs down the track while I would also feed both margins during the course of the match, with a view to catching there later on.
Bait wise I had the options of meat, paste, corn and pellet with a bag of the fishery pellet to supplement the feed.

1·15pm and at the all-in I fed 2 pots with a mix of pellet, corn and meat at both 13 & 7 mtrs and with the wind gusting strongly opted to start at 7mts with a single grain of corn on the deck.
30 minutes in and without so much as a knock the float suddenly dipped and within 30secs a small Carp of around 12ozs was safely in the net. This was to be a bit of a false dawn however as another 1½hrs went by without another bite.

I decided to re-feed heavily at 7mtrs and have a stroll to see how the rest were doing, before going to get a burger (which was looking as if it may be the best bite of the day

Geoff was sorting out a feeder as despite sticking it out at 13mtrs on the pole he had only lost the 3 Carp he’d hooked, while Nick could only report a couple of half hearted knocks on his float that hadn’t developed further.
Strolling round Brian was owning up to 7 small Carp while Clive was another with nothing to show for his efforts…… 

although Ant on the next peg was owning up to having around 20 fish in his net………

All along it appeared that there were pockets of fish and if you were lucky enough to have them in front of you, you would catch while others around you would struggle.

Matt managed 3 fish in the short time I watched while Malc could hardly buy a bite, and this seemed to be the story as you went down the pegs.

Returning from my walk I sat at my peg and finished my burger and pondered how to approach the final 2 hours. Geoff had managed a couple of Carp on the feeder in my absence, but Nick was still fishless as was Keith’s lad David, who was sweating on a £1 side bet that he’d had with The Minx who was admitting to a small Roach & Perch in her net.
The deciding factor was that the wind appeared to have died down a bit, and I still had plenty of finely cubed meat, so over to 13 mtrs with a shallow rig and out with the catty to see if I could tempt anything up in the water. 5-6 bits of meat every 30 second, surely this would bring something? 40 minutes later and not a swirl, knock or bite. Back over with a full depth rig, if nothing had intercepted my free offerings perhaps they might be attracted to them laying on the deck? 10 minutes in and the float slid away, but the white hydro couldn’t stop it from reaching the reeds in time!!!!!!!!!!!!

Back out with a Black Hydro’d kit and 10 minutes later the merest dip of the float results in Carp number 2 in the net. In the final hour I managed another 4, nothing of any real size, but positively bagging compared with the rest of my match. David managed to save his £1 from The Minx’s clutches when he had a little Carp on a pellet and his top2 in the last 5 minutes of the match as he started to pack his kit away, not that he rubbed The Minx’s nose in it………..MUCH!!!!!


The weigh-in reflected just how patchy the venue had been on the day with Nick (Neo) Williams taking the win with 52lb 5ozs. Ant managed a 3rd section win on the trot putting himself into pole for the overall series honours. Also it was great to see Nick (Polepot) finally pick up some coin for 2nd in his section, his 1st pay out despite fishing the Jinx Series from it’s start 6 years ago.

My six Carp weighed a meagre 6lbs 6ozs which amazingly enough was enough for 2nd in my section, bringing me a bit of coin to go with my pound that The Minx had to return to me on the day.

So a 200+mile round trip for not a lot of fish, but it was just good to be out on the bank again and end enjoying the crack. The next Jinx match is at Stockton, but before that it is the Maggotdrowning.com Pairs Weekend at Rolf’s Lake which should be a blast if it’s anything like last year.

Position	Peg	Angler	Weight
1st	Peg 29	Nick Williams	52lb 05ozs
2nd	Peg 21	Simon Mound        (Guest)	43lb 15ozs
3rd	Peg 15	Ant Haywood	41lb 05ozs
4th	Peg 3	Roy Ravenhill	37lb 05ozs
5th	Peg 26	Dave Moore	28lb 12ozs
6th	Peg 19	Matt Nutt	24lb 03ozs
7th	Peg1	Eric Robathan	23lb 14ozs
8th	Peg 12	Brian Bevan	15lb 13ozs
9th	Peg 17	Paul Roberts	12lb 15ozs
10th	Peg 2	Mark Causer	11lb 09ozs
11th	Peg 22	Nick Jones	10lb 07ozs
12th	Peg 23	Keith Ashby	8lb 09ozs
13th	Peg 20	Malc Doyle	6lb 12ozs
14th	Peg7	Peter Morton	6lb 06ozs
15th	Peg24	Kev Lake	5lb 10ozs
16th=	Peg10	Mark Lake	4lb 02ozs
16th=	Peg 6	Geoff Eggison	4lb 02ozs
18th	Peg 18	Steve Wilson	3lb 15ozs
19th	Peg 5	Dave Ashby	1lb 12ozs
20th	Peg 30	Gemma Doyle	4ozs
21st	Peg16	Simon Rowley	1oz
22nd=	Peg 8	Nick  Watkins-Price	D.N.W.
22nd=	Peg 14	Clive Pritchard	D.N.W.