Rockells Farm. Saffron Walden. Essex. June 28th, 2009.

Marsh AC club match.

Todays venue for the Marsh AC club match is Rockells Farm. It’s the venue where I set a new club match record last year of 293½lbs and the club recorded their all time best aggregate weight of 1991lbs weighed in between 18 anglers.

As usual I got round to Dave’s at 6·45am to follow him and Colin down to the venue, It’s not the easiest of venues to find without a Sat Nav, being somewhat off the beaten track, but we made good time despite quite a bit of fog on the trip up and pulled into the car park just after 8am.

There were 19 booked in for todays match, 15 club members and 4 guests, Clive and Al who are in danger of becoming permanent fixtures and Keith Ashby and Vic Nugent (both GOT Baits sponsored anglers) who enjoy the occasional trip out with the club due to the relaxed atmosphere and the banter and laughs that are had during the day.

With no permanent numbers allocated to the pegs at Rockells, Keith and I set off into the lifting fog to peg out while Dave sorted the monies out. Every peg appeared to have fish moving in front of it and in the margins promising a good days sport ahead. Pegs 1-3 went into the very end, and could all be regarded as flyers, while pegs 4-11 went in down the right hand side and 12-19 up the left (The high numbers being where you wanted to be). With draw time approaching, 3 members hadn’t arrived (Martin, Zack & Graham) but the draw went ahead anyway.

Keith & Vic drew pegs 1 & 2, and with them both being very positive anglers would take all the stopping on those pegs . My home for the day would be peg 17, with Al for company on peg 18. At the end of the draw there were 3 pegs left which I drew for the missing anglers peg 3 for Martin and peg 19 for Graham (Both flyers) and peg 14 for Zack.

Settling into peg 17 I have to say that I was happy with my draw. I’m pretty single minded in how I approach Rockells, always fishing paste as close in as I can and peg 17 looked tailor made for it, with nettles and reeds overhanging the left hand margin and boards in the right hand margin ………

The rigs were simplicity itself, 3 top 2′s holding rigs that were made up of 4X12 Middy Paste Floats that are a really strong line through design made up on ·20 Ultima Power Match finished off with a Drennan size 12 Carp Method hook to fish paste in both margins where I had around 2 feet of water on both sides. I had 6 pints of it made up, which was GOT Baits Atomic with some GOT Baits Pineapple Atomic Cloud added. Feed would be a mix of soaked 4 and 6 mm pellet. I had 2 extra sections of pole set up, but hopefully wouldn’t be using them unless I hooked a real beast as I really wanted to be able to fish just the top 2′s for speed and comfort.

Just along on peg 18 Al’s swim looked well capable of pushing me all the way, especially as Al has been putting some good results together recently………

Martin, Zack and Graham had arrived meanwhile, and I fancied that Martin might be in with a chance on peg 3, as although he would only class himself as a pleasure angler, he’d had a good result here last year weighing in a total of 232¾lbs, so the venue obviously suits his approach.
Looking across I could see Keith, apparently lost in his thoughts, sitting on his flyer, so no pressure there then……

The fog had burnt off by now, but there was still a fair bit of cloud, so although it was warming up hopefully it wouldn’t turn into the total scorcher that had been predicted. With the venues potential to produce big weights todays match was being split into two 3 hour sessions with a 1 hour break mid way through for a mid-match weigh-in taken at the fishery owners insistence, so with everyone set the All-In was called at 10am for the morning session.

A handful of pellet into both margins, and with fish already showing on my left side that’s where the 1st bit of paste was lowered into. A couple of knocks and the float slid away and the first Carp of the day, a small Mirror of around 12ozs was soon safely in the net, number 1 on the clicker. To be honest it was pretty much steady away for me from then on. Al however seemed to be having a few problems, it looked as if he was fishing pellet that was being intercepted by Roach and the smaller Carp, on top of which he seemed to be bumping a few better fish. I was getting a few to many small Carp for my liking, but I found last year that you just had to wade through them and keep the bait going in to draw the better fish, and I started to put a few better 2-3lb fish together. They were all coming from the left hand margin though as every time I looked down the right I was waiting to long for a bite before landing yet another 8oz Carp.

2 hours in with 44 fish on the clicker another look down the right hand margin resulted in an instant bite and a much better fish powered off and after an anxious couple of minutes a nice Leather Carp of around 12lbs was safe in the net. With a few tail patterns now showing by the boards I concentrated on that line for the last hour. With 5 minutes to go I fed 4 pints of pellet into the right hand margin and another couple down the left in an attempt to hold the fish during the hours break for the weigh-in, while a final put in produced a 5lb Common Carp as the All-Out was called at 1pm.

The weigh-in started from my side and my weight of 120lbs made up of 62 fish was comfortably leading till it came to the 1st 3 pegs. Keith on peg 1 put 148lbs on the scales (and he reckoned he was getting roached out, lying ******) while Vic on peg 2 ran him close with 133¼lbs, however it was Martin who put us all in our place when he put a staggering 180¾lbs on the scales for the half way lead. So with over 1100lbs of fish weighed it looked like all the club records set last year would be going, as it normally fishes better in the afternoon. In fact it had taken the whole hour to weigh-in meant that we delayed the start of the afternoon session to allow everyone to get back to their pegs.
As I strolled back I noticed that Clive was looking a bit numb as he’d struggled on peg 10 for a mere 22lbs and already needed snookers ……

……… it looks like his drawing hand has decided to get its own back on him big time, for all the punishment he’s given it for miss behaving recently.

Returning to my peg I could see that despite the disturbance of the weigh-in the fish had settled on the pellets by the boards as evidenced by the tail patterns I could see. So 2·15pm and the All-In was called for the afternoon session. 1st put in and away goes the float attached to a 3lb Common and that’s the way it continued. Al seeing how successful paste had been for me gave it a go, and while it was an improvement he was having yet another nightmare as he suffered from hook pulls and foul hookers.
Elsewhere round the lake sport wasn’t quite so fast and furious I’m afraid, in fact rumour had it that Clive had put a pair of ear plugs in, so that he didn’t have to keep hearing the splashing of fish coming to others nets……

 I suffered with a few foul hookers as well during the afternoon session, despite cutting down on the feed, there were just so many fish down by the boards, even hooked fish charging through them didn’t spook them. I basically fished the right hand margin for the whole 3 hours as the bites kept coming and they were from a better stamp of fish than those from the left hand margin.

In fact, by the time the All-Out was called at 5·15pm I was quite relieved as my right shoulder was starting to ache, and a quick glance showed me that I had another 61 fish on the clicker.

I was soon packed away and dropped my kit back to the car, before making my way round to the weigh-in which was starting with Keith as the scales had been left there at the end of the morning session.
Well, What can I say, Keith put an amazing 234lbs on the scales for a total of 382lbs, Vic added 173¼lbs for a combined weight of 306½lbs, while Martin weighed 202½lbs to edge out Keith by 1¼lbs with a total weight of 383¼lbs. So that was over 1000lbs of fish weighed in from the first 3 pegs !!!
Dave had had a decent afternoon on peg 6 putting 167½lbs on the scales for a total of 254¼lbs. Tony on peg 8 recorded a total of 142½lbs and most had improved on their morning totals by the time we got round to Colin on peg 15 who added a net of 127½lbs for a total of 211lbs meanwhile Terry on peg 16 recorded a total of 140¾lbs.
When it came to my peg the scales recorded a weight of 210lbs giving me a total of 330lbs and 3rd place on the day. Alan put a hard earned 101½lbs on the scales for a total of 171¾lbs while Graham rounded off things with a total weight of 114lbs for the 2 sessions.

So there you have it, Martin is now the proud holder of the club match record at 383lbs 4ozs. The top 10 anglers recorded 4 ‘Triple Tons’, 2 ‘Double Tons’ and 4 ‘Tons’ between them. A club record total of 2911lbs 14ozs was weighed in between 19 anglers, an average of over 153lbs per angler. I broke my 3 hour PB match weight as well as my PB overall match weight as did quite a few others. Hopefully we’ll get a chance to try and better that next year, or is that being greedy?

Position	Peg	Angler	Morning	Afternoon	Total Weight
1st	Peg 3	Martin Hucker	180lbs 12ozs	202lbs 08ozs	383lbs 04ozs
2nd	Peg 1	Keith Ashby	148lbs 00ozs	234lbs 00ozs	382lbs 00ozs
3rd	Peg 17	Peter Morton	120lbs 00ozs	210lbs 00ozs	330lbs 00ozs
4th	Peg 2	Vic Nugent	133lbs 04ozs	173lbs 04ozs	306lbs 08ozs
5th	Peg 6	Dave Collier	86lbs 12ozs	167lbs 08ozs	254lbs 04ozs
6th	Peg 15	Colin Sharrard	83lbs 08ozs	127lbs 08ozs	211lbs 00ozs
7th	Peg 18	Alan Loader	70lbs 04ozs	101lbs 08ozs	171lbs 12ozs
8th	Peg 8	Tony Roberts	48lbs 00ozs	94lbs 08ozs	142lbs 08ozs
9th	Peg 16	Terry Goff	51lbs 04ozs	89lbs 08ozs	140lbs 12ozs
10th	Peg 19	Graham Manning	63lbs 12ozs	50lbs 04ozs	114lbs 00ozs
11th	Peg 13	Bob Hucker	29lbs 00ozs	62lbs 00ozs	91lbs 00ozs
12th	Peg 4	Judy Hermite	47lbs 00ozs	35lbs 12ozs	82lbs 12ozs
13th	Peg 10	Clive Pritchard	22lbs 00ozs	52lbs 12ozs	74lbs 12ozs
14th	Peg 7	Roger Noakes	23lbs 08ozs	31lbs 00ozs	54lbs 08ozs
15th	Peg 5	Eddie Dobson	19lbs 00ozs	28lbs 08ozs	47lbs 08ozs
16th	Peg 12	Ken Walker	14lbs 00ozs	27lbs 12ozs	41lbs 12ozs
17th	Peg 9	Jim Boase	15lbs 00ozs	25lbs 12ozs	40lbs 12ozs
18th	Peg 11	Rod Turner	9lbs 00ozs	14lbs 00ozs	23lbs 00ozs
19th	Peg 14	Zack Johnson	6lbs 02ozs	13lbs 12ozs	19lbs 14ozs

Maver Larford Lakes. Larford, Worcestershire. June 20th, 2009.

Maggotdrowning.com

 

Individual Championship 2009.

 

Well today is the day of the Maggotdrowning.com Individual Championship, and this year’s venue is the Match Lake at Larford Lakes. It meant an early start for me as it’s about 150 miles for me to drive. So with the car loaded up by 5am I was off, and a nice smooth trip with just a stop for coffee on the way found me pulling into the fishery car park just after 8am. It’s a small world, as I parked next to Andy(andy222)Feltham an MD’s member who hadn’t posted for a while, and was there to fish a club match on the Specimen Lake.

Soon after people started to arrive in force, Vince who had organised today’s match was soon joined by Clive and after dipping our nets we decided to get in quick for breakfast. A Full English for £5 was soon dispatched and fishery pellets purchased. I have to say that I find it strange that you can only feed a maximum of 4 bags of fishery pellets(2 pints of Skrettings in a bag costing £2·50p), but you can feed unlimited amounts of meat or corn, which can’t be good for water quality. Waiting for the draw it was good to catch up with faces, both old and new, The customary side bet of a Golden Nugget was struck with Vince and Gemma(The Minx), while John’s good lady Lynn parted us from our cash in exchange for raffle tickets, the proceeds of which will be going to The British Heart Foundation, and by the time that Vince called the draw at 9am, 38 of us were ready to go, meaning that we could leave out the even pegs giving everyone a bit of space. Into the hat and I’m rewarded with peg 37, while Vince asks me to draw for him and receives peg 51 as a present from me.

At least peg 37 being on the clubhouse bank means I could drive up and almost park behind it. It didn’t look to bad to be honest with a chuck to the island on the feeder and a nice bed of lilies in front of the bush to my left that should be good for a few.

Looking around I’d got my fellow Marsh AC member, Tony(spamwham)Roberts to my left, so there should be a good bit of banter during the day……

To my right I'd got Andrew(Marginman)Willet and next up fellow blogger and Jinx Series partner Clive, who appeared to be knocking up some groundbait, though he might have had the prayer mat out and be offering up a plea to the fishing gods………

Looking across Vince was over on peg 51, so at least I’d be able to keep tabs on the likely destination of the Golden Nugget.

The set up today was 2 4X12 Malman Adam’s to 0·16 with a size 18 Drennan Carp Match hooks to fish 6mm banded pellet and meat on the deck at 7mtrs straight out and on the edge of the lilies to my left where there was about 3feet of water and a Malman MTD2 dibber, again on 0·16 with a 18 Drennan Carp Match hook for up in the water. I also set up a Malman SC paste to 0·22 Power Match with a size 12 Drennan Carp Feeder hook for paste, just in case any lumps put in an appearance and the feeder rod.
Bait for the day was a mix of pellets, meat and paste, with feed taken care of by dampened 4mm fishery pellets.

So 11am and Vince called the All-In. A handful of pellet straight out to 7mtrs and another to the edge of the lilies and before I could ship out a banded pellet to 7mtrs a shout rang out signifying The Minx had her 1st fish in the net, sending a shudder down the spines of more than a few blokes.
Out to 7mtrs and after lifting and dropping the rig a couple of times the black hydro ripped out of the top kit and soon a plump F1 of around 1½lbs was safely in the net.

This was swiftly followed by a small stockie of around 8ozs and than a bit of frustration started to set in , I had a spate of very finicky bites, but I managed to hit them, only to have them shed the hook as they came to the net for no apparent reason, the hook certainly hadn’t blunted. Indeed I wasn’t the only one to suffer like this, as I found out talking to others after the match. I was still managing to put a few in the net, though there were a few to many small stockies rather than the better stamp of F1′s……

To clear my head I took a quick stroll along with the camera to see how others were fairing. Dai was getting a few, but it was proving to be a bit of a struggle………

Dirk seemed to be happy enough with his lot, and while not pulling up any trees appeared to be catching with a degree of regularity.

While tucked away on the other side of the lake I could see Malc(The Jinx) on peg 55, and judging by the way he was concentrating, he was obviously catching……

Tony was looking as if he was in for a good day with a nice lily pad at a comfy 8mtrs he was catching a decent stamp of fish fishing shallow, though he had been seen off a couple of times by lumps that had found the sanctuary of the pads……

Clive meanwhile was having a bit of a mare, he was another suffering from lost fish, though he did manage to successfully land one as I looked on……

Back at my peg I continued to put a few in the net, but yet again they were mostly small skimmers and stockies though as Clive strolled past I was into something a little better………

Which proved to be one of the better F1′s that gave a pretty good account of itself, I did ask Clive to stay for a while as he seemed to bring me a bit of luck, but for some reason he didn’t think much of my offer……

As the match wore on Vince had managed to bag a couple of what seemed to be reasonable fish on the feeder, but still needed to find something to up his catch rate and avoid the loss of yet another Golden Nugget………

Weather wise we seemed to have just about everything during the course of the match and with half an hour to go it started to rain, and while my bites had become few and far between, Tony was still catching steadily and continued to put fish regularly in the net right up to the All-out being called at 4pm.

As we packed away at least the rain eased off and chatting to Tony I felt he must be in with a chance of at least a section as I thought he had something approaching the ‘Ton’. The scales soon arrived and Tony’s fish weighed in at an ounce shy of 97lbs to place him into the lead, while my net went 50lbs 5ozs. Clive had indeed suffered with a mere 19lbs 3ozs to show for his 5 hours. Poor Vince having slipped on the wet bank and pulled his thigh as he was packing his kit away suffered the loss of yet another Golden Nugget with just 17lbs 11ozs. I followed the scales round as far as Malc’s peg where he put an excellent 89¾lbs on the scales before I returned to make my way back to the club house.

Back at the club house I was pleased to find I’d avoided a Minxing as Gem had struggled today so I managed to retrieve the Golden Nugget she’d taken from me on the previous Saturday at Rolf’s. A buffet was laid on for us, with plenty to go round for all, despite Steve(Steak) doing his best to decimate it single handedly. Vince soon had the results sorted and the presentation underway……

The section winners on the day being………

Alan(Genus9)West
Lee(Hicko1)Hicking
Malc(The Jinx)Doyle
Wayne(Baggingman)Panting

The main honours going to ……….
3rd place……….Tony(spamwham)Roberts.

2nd place……….Mark(Bungee)Collinson.

and the winner on the day and MD’s Individual Champion 2009……………
Steve(Fordy1)Ford.

The day was rounded off with the Raffle

Which thanks to Lynn’s efforts selling tickets
raised £200 for The British Heart Foundation.

A few Thank You’s are in order at this point, Firstly to Vince for organising the match, and doing his usual Excellent Job. To Lynn for a great job flogging the raffle tickets. To Phil Briscoe and all his staff at Maver Larford for their efforts during the day. Finally to all those members of Maggotdrowning.com that supported and took part in the match, making it the success that it was, it couldn’t be done without you. Looks like we’ll have to do it all over again next year.

Position	Peg	Angler	Weight
1st	Peg 65	Steve (Fordy1) Ford	116lbs 07ozs
2nd	Peg 59	Mark(Bungee)Collinson	98lbs 13ozs
3rd	Peg 35	Tony(spamwham)Roberts	96lbs 15ozs
4th	Peg 55	Malc(The Jinx)Doyle	89lbs 12ozs
5th	Peg 7	Wayne(Baggingman)Panting	89lbs 03ozs
6th	Peg 71	Lee(Hicko1)Hicking	82lbs 02ozs
7th	Peg 13	Alan(Genus9)West	73lbs 00ozs
8th	Peg 23	Eddie(Ed10)Gutheridge	72lbs 05ozs
9th	Peg 63	John(Aigy)Haigh	66lbs 03ozs
10th	Peg 27	Mike Globe	64lbs 03ozs
11th	Peg 5	Simon(Simple)Mound	63lbs 15ozs
12th	Peg 11	Fred(Milo)Parker	55lbs 08ozs
13th	Peg 61	Mark(MarkC)Causer	54lbs 04ozs
14th	Peg 25	Dirk(The Dangler)Williams	53lbs 12ozs
15th	Peg 33	Paul(Floatfisher Jnr)Killip	53lbs 04ozs
16th	Peg 37	Peter(Mugger)Morton	50lbs 05ozs
17th	Peg 69	Chris(Looney)Kendall	50lbs 02ozs
18th	Peg 73	Tony(JR Hartley)Clark	47lbs 05ozs
19th	Peg 9	Ian(Sprucey)Spruce	46lbs 01ozs
20th	Peg 31	Alex(BaggerJ)Clark	40lbs 13ozs
21st	Peg 21	Paul(Scatty)Scatt	37lbs 10ozs
22nd	Peg 77	Steve(Steak)Akal	36lbs 02ozs
23rd	Peg 67	Luke(Ulladubulla)Downing	34lbs 15ozs
24th	Peg 45	Roy(Royst)Ravenhill	34lbs 10ozs
25th	Peg 39	Andrew(Marginman)Willet	34lbs 06ozs
26th	Peg 75	Marcus(Budgie65)Burgess	31lbs 13ozs
27th	Peg 29	Dai(Dai Fish)Thomas	28lbs 02ozs
28th	Peg 19	Simon(Me)Rowley	23lbs 15ozs
29th	Peg 41	Clive(BlackHydro)Pritchard	19lbs 03ozs
30th	Peg 57	Ian(Fish4alarf)Venn	18lbs 13ozs
31st	Peg 46	Midge(Midge99)Milnes	18lbs 02ozs
32nd	Peg 51	Vince(Vince G)Gould	17lbs 11ozs
33rd	Peg 43	Steven(Drynets)Parker	16lbs 10ozs
34th	Peg 15	Gemma(The Minx)Doyle	15lbs 11ozs
35th	Peg 2	John(Bucko)Buxton	14lbs 01ozs
36th=	Peg 47	Brian(Croydon Angler)Grey	D.N.W.
36th=	Peg 53	Simon Elsey	D.N.W.
36th=	Peg 81	Justin(Smasher)Laundon	D.N.W.