Hartleylands Farm Fishery. The Reservoir. August 18th, 2007.

Marsh AC club match.

Well I was out with the members of Marsh AC today for a club match on The Reservoir at Hartleylands Farm, Cranbrook, Kent.
A quick look out of the window revealed a dull grey day with the rain falling, so after a spot of breakfast it was time to load the car up, not forgetting the waterproofs as it looked like being a wet old day. Hartleylands is about 40 miles away from home and a relaxed run down takes about an hour meaning that I arrived just after 8am just as it stopped raining, in plenty of time for the 8·30am draw.

Holidays, weather and a number of other factors mean that there were only 12 of us present for this match, meaning that there was plenty of room for us as we had the whole of the Reservoir booked. Into the hat and I found that I had drawn peg 25, not a draw that particularly excited me, but as with most pegs on the water it should be good for a few fish.

Today was really going to be a day for me to try a few things out. I’ve become more and more disenchanted with the Hydrolastic that I’ve been using over the past 18 months/2years. I really don’t feel that it gives me the control especially when it comes to decent sized carp. With this in mind I’ve stripped the red hydro out of the power kits of my main pole and my margin pole. I’ve replace these with solid yellow Vespe (22+) in 2 of the kits for my main pole and solid orange Vespe (25+) in the margin pole kits, all set as soft as possible.
I also had a bucket of unbranded feed pellets that my local tackle dealer had asked me to try out and give him my thoughts on. They’re green 4mm with a strong fishmeal smell, lighter than swimstim ones though and when they’re dampened the colour doesn’t leach out of them. Bait was to be paste made up with bait-tech Special G Green groundbait, though I did have some Dedra’s with me as a back up.

Setting up didn’t take long with just 3 top kits, a margin rig, another for 4mtrs in front and another for 7mtrs.
Looking across I could see Colin and Terry discussing their prospects for the day ahead……

 and Dave making sure he had everything with him as he settled into peg 17, which had set a new fishery record of 288lbs the month before……
Tony, my partner on the recent MD’s pairs weekend was just up from me on peg 21, while Paul, my guest on the day settled into peg 29 close to the car park.

10am and the all in and I fed 3 large handfuls of pellets into both margins along with a handful at 4 and 7 mtrs. Straight out to 7mtrs with a large knob of paste and after a minute the float buried and after a short but spirited scrap the first fish of the day was in the net, a scale perfect Common of around 4lbs. Straight back out with the paste and a few pellets over the top and a minute later I was in again resulting in a similar sized Mirror resting safely in the net. Back out and within a minute the elastic streamed out and a 5lb Mirror slid over the net, Happy Days!!!!!

At this point the day took a turn for the worst, the bites just stopped!!!! Despite rotating through all the lines nothing!!!!
I could see that others were still managing the occasional fish. Just after 11·30 I got a bite down my left hand margin and after a spirited fight managed to put the net under a nice mirror around the 8lb mark, but then things went quiet for me again. Just after 12noon Vince put in an appearance, he had hoped to be fishing today but family commitments scuppered that, however he found the time to pop down for a brief chat just as Dave came round with a hot steak slice from the farm shop, always very civilised affairs the matches Dave runs.

A change to double Dedra’s on the hook resulted in a couple of bites to which I was only briefly connected, hard to imagine that the worms had covered the hook point to prevent a proper hook up, so maybe they were foul hookers? However I did manage to land a couple of smaller Carp before Vince left, but felt I was dropping behind in the match as I could see Tony further up still sneaking a few out from the margins though a couple of better fish had managed to get the better of him as revealed by his rather forthright comments on the matter.

Young Zack, the club Junior was nicking the odd fish on the feeder……
and Chris on the opposite side to me was starting to put together a run of decent fish.

With an hour to go I decided to concentrate on the 4mtr line but all it produced was a couple of Skimmers while Tony appeared to be getting a fish a chuck now. Finally with 10 minutes to go I got another Carp, another decent Mirror around the 8lb mark swiftly followed by another of a similar stamp just before the all out.

Weigh in time and all was revealed, Colin, Terry, Dave and Chris had all been amongst the fish with Chris’s good late run earning him 2nd on the day with 88lbs 8ozs. Graham Manning on peg 15 managed 81lbs 8ozs for 3rd on the day, but everyone was eclipsed by Tony’s level 116lbs for a fine win on the day.

1st	Tony Roberts	116lbs 00ozs
2nd	Chris Withall	88lbs 08ozs
3rd	Graham Manning	81lbs 08ozs
4th	Terry Goff	69lbs 12ozs
5th	Dave Collier	69lbs 08ozs
6th	Colin Sharrard	54lbs 08ozs
7th	Peter Morton	43lbs 00ozs
8th	Jim Boase	33lbs 12ozs
9th	Zack Johnson	28lbs 08ozs
10th	Paul East	28lbs 00ozs
11th	Kevin Loveland	24lbs 04ozs
12th	Martin Hucker	17lbs 00ozs

So to sum up, a decent days fishing in good company as it always is with the gang from Marsh AC. Maybe not the best of days for me personally, but far from the worst. Nice to get out and catch a few fish after my nightmare at Stockton the previous week, and it didn’t rain at all until I got into the car to start the drive home.

Where to next? Well it’s back to Rolf’s in 2 weeks time for the last round of the Jinx Series, unless of course I manage to get out over the Bank Holiday Weekend.