Hartleylands Farm Fishery. Nick’s Lake. July 25th, 2009.

Marsh AC club match.

Today it’s another Marsh AC club match and we’re on Nick’s Lake at Hartleylands Farm. There’s a few guests joining us today as is usual and with the whole lake booked hopefully it will throw up a few decent weights. Loading up the car the weather looked set fair and it was a smooth run down to the Knox Bridge Café for breakfast where I’d arranged to meet up with Keith and his pal Mick who were travelling down from Milton Keynes. Stomachs filled it was a short run down to the fishery and we pulled into the car park around 8·20am.
Along with Keith and Mick there were 2 other guests fishing with us today. Clive, who’s rapidly becoming a fixture and Dave Talbot (Faye’s Dad) who’d been able to accept the invite to join us.

With 17 anglers and 37 pegs on the lake there would be plenty of space for everyone today, and Dave soon had the monies collected and the draw under way. Soon it was my turn and when peg 23 came to hand I was happy enough and pretty sure it would provide a decent days fishing. You can see where we all ended up on the pegging plan below …………

I soon had my kit in situ and found that I had Tony on peg 21 and Jim on peg 25 for company today, while I could see Clive opposite on peg 12. Now Nick’s is one of those lakes that responds to a variety of methods, and with a bit of space the pole fished shallow is normally the way to go at this time of the year, but I really fancied fishing the waggler today, as I don’t do it often enough and while it probably wouldn’t win, I was sure it would provide me with a decent days fishing, the only fly in the ointment being the wind blowing from my left to right straight up into pegs 17 & 18. So the Shakespeare 11ft Micro was set up with a Shimano Stradic spooled up with 4lb Maxima, the business end was a Dave Brittain pellet waggler while the hook was a size 14 Drennan Match Carp with a hair rigged pellet band. With and hour and a quarter to set up I did get the feeder rod out as a back up, but didn’t really plan on using it and I also set up one top kit with a margin rig as It’s possible to nick a couple of lumps late on down the margins if needed. Bait was 6 & 8mm pellet with a bit of hemp and sweetcorn for the margins.

Jim and John came up for a chat while we were waiting for the off, Jim remarking that with so long to set up he could have had another half hour in bed. Tony had said that he was going to go for it shallow on the pole as he had plenty of water to go at, and it’s a method he enjoys. Looking across I could Clive see sitting at his peg and looking quite serene, obviously happy that he’d got his drawing hand back under control and looking forward to the day ahead on a water that I just knew would be more to his liking after his recent grueller of a session at Drayton Reservoir ……

So at 10am Dave blew for the All-in and I fed a couple of pints of hemp and pellet into the margins before starting on the feeder to the corner of the island, to allow me to catapult some pellet out to the front of the island to prime it for the waggler. Lot’s of little taps on the feeder resulted in a couple of small Carp in the 1st 10 minutes, but as I could already see signs of fish coming for the feed in front of the island I soon had the waggler out and was into a Carp 1st put in.


 The wind was making things tricky however, as well as some Ducks and Moorhens that were doing their best to mop up any loose pellets. I could hear by the splashing coming from my right that Tony was getting amongst a few, and from what I could see around the lake he appeared to be out catching everyone…………

My problem was that I had to drop the float within 18 inches of the island to get a bite, any further away and I couldn’t buy a bite, and feeding a bit further away had no effect. Then a couple of disasters befell me. Firstly the float adaptor split, so I had to re-rig, however this time I went with a Drake 3AAA peacock waggler that I felt I could control better, then first cast out a Moorhen dashed out to the splash of the float landing and tangled with the rig. Thankfully I managed to retrieve the rig complete with Moorhen which I netted and the bird was released none the worse for it’s experience, before I could once more get down to the task in hand.

Dave had come round for a stroll and confessed that he was experiencing his own “Mugger Moments©” as were a few of those pegged down to my left where it was much more sheltered, though I could see Simon down on peg 31 putting fish in the net on a regular basis, and Dave was soon followed by Colin, who reckoned that he’d only got 7 small carp to show for his first 2 hours of effort. Judy up on peg 16 appeared to be concentrating on a margin swim to put a few fish together……

I managed to get back into some sort of rhythm and started to put a run of fish together, but a couple of times the wind got up making presentation awkward and on those occasions I took the opportunity to take a look down the margins and while this produced a couple of small Carp I soon got back out on the waggler when the wind eased. Just past halfway Tony strolled down as he took a break to have a bite to eat and was admitting to 60+ fish.

Round the other parts of the lake people were having their own private battles. Keith on peg 6 was trying to get to grips with a venue that was new to him, and with the wind blowing straight into him had come shorter allowing himself to feed comfortably and was starting to put a few fish together……

While his friend Mick was having quite an enjoyable day, having drawn peg 9 (one of the noted pegs) he was happily putting together a good net of fish on the pole……

Chris on peg 8 to his right looked to be doing OK from what I could see as he did battle with one of the lakes resident Carp………

With time marching on, I kept plugging away on the waggler and apart from Tony who was catching really well, I felt that I was holding my own against everyone else from what I could see. Clive was fishing his right hand margin, and while he was putting fish in the net, he seemed to be suffering a few blank periods in between………

Colin however was experiencing a really good end to the match and in the last 2 hours was absolutely flying, taking decent fish regularly from the margin over on peg 14……

Jim was having a bit of a struggle and confessed to a bit of frustration as he felt he wasn’t getting the best from his swim as it seemed that wherever he looked others were doing better than him……

with 20 minutes to go the wind got up again so I took a final look down the margin with the pole, but only managed 2 more fish, they were however better fish and probably added about 15lbs to my net before Dave blew the All-out at 4pm.

So with the kit packed up and back in the car it was time for the weigh-in. Terry kicked off from peg 1 with 44¼lbs and was immediately overtaken by Dave with 48lbs. Keith had finally sorted things out to record 76¼lbs, but his mate Mick was to take the bragging rights on the trip home to Milton Keynes with a fine 101lbs. Clive had 78lbs to show for his efforts while Colin had a final 2 hours “To die for” as he put it weighing 112¼lbs. Dave T declared he’d really enjoyed his day and the 60¼lbs he put on the scales. Tony’s nets rather gave the game away as they were lifted out, and when his catch was totalled up 176¼lbs was always going to be enough for the win. My own fish came to 106lbs which would prove to be good enough for 4th on the day. While Simon was last to weigh and put a fine 129lbs on the scales for 2nd on the day.

So 5 Ton weights in a total of 1155½lbs weighed in resulting in an average of 68lbs per angler made for another good day out for the members of Marsh AC and their guests, and I think shows just what a good venue Hartleylands Farm is. Thanks to all that made it another enjoyable day out.


The next Marsh club match is at Colemans Cottage next month, while my next outing is to Rolf’s Lake for the 4th match in The Jinx Series next Saturday.
 

Position	Peg	Angler	Weight
1st	Peg 21	Tony Roberts	176lbs 04ozs
2nd	Peg 31	Simon Watkins	129lbs 00ozs
3rd	Peg 14	Colin Sharrard	112lbs 04ozs
4th	Peg 23	Peter Morton	106lbs 00ozs
5th	Peg 9	Mick Wright      (guest)	101lbs 00ozs
6th	Peg 12	Clive Pritchard   (guest)	78lbs 00ozs
7th	Peg 6	Keith Ashby       (guest)	76lbs 04ozs
8th	Peg 18	Dave Talbot       (guest)	60lbs 04ozs
9th	Peg 8	Chris Withall	50lbs 08ozs
10th	Peg 3	Dave Collier	48lbs 00ozs
11th	Peg 16	Judy Hermite	44lbs 12ozs
12th	Peg 1	Terry Goff	44lbs 04ozs
13th	Peg 27	John Holdsworth	42lbs 08ozs
14th	Peg 25	Jim Boase	36lbs 04ozs
15th	Peg 35	Martin Hucker	24lbs 08ozs
16th	Peg 37	Zack Johnson	16lbs 12ozs
17th	Peg 33	Rod Turner	9lbs 00ozs

Rolf’s Lake. Holton. Oxfordshire. July 11th, 2009.

The JINX Series 2009

Match 3.

Well today is the day of the third match of the JINX Series at Rolf’s Lake. It promises to be a little different today, as a good number of the lads were there last night to fish a JINX 2009 SPECIAL EVENING MATCH between the hours of 6·30pm till 11·30pm and were obviously stopping overnight. With a few of the series regulars not fishing that, but some guests taking their places it should be pretty full today.
So after being woken just after 7am by our new kitten who wanted feeding, I logged onto the Maggotdrowning forum and sure enough Slim had already put a post up about the evening match…

“Just got off the phone from steve(sacker)wilson, seems rolfs fished quite well last night. 3 x 200lb weights, and a fair few 100 lb + weights. Over 2000 lb of fish were caught and on average worked out about 120 lb per angler.”

So things looked promising for today despite the forecast predicting clouds and rain, and with the car loaded up I was soon on my way via ‘The Jimmy Griddle’ café in Battersea, for my customary stop for a ‘Full English’ to set me up for the day. Suitably refreshed and with just 1 further stop for a coffee at the services, I pulled into an already packed car park just after 10·30am.

First things first, so I dipped my nets before catching up with the events of the past night. It seemed that Vince (my pound coin dispenser) who has been trying to catch a Rolf’s Ton for some time had achieved his aim in spades with a 200lb+ bag, Well Done mate.
However people were already ribbing him that I hadn’t been there for him to take a £1 back from me, and they were already speculating that normal service would be resumed with me present today.
There was a pretty full house, as a couple of anglers that fished the evening match were guesting today, Vince and Budgie, while Dave had again travelled down from Leeds, this time with Bagger J in tow.

So draw time once more, and Clive had refused to mention a single peg number in case his hand played up again, but was rewarded with peg 6 this time. I just wanted to avoid Peg 13 and hung back, but it refused to come out and was still in the bag when I drew. Slowly I opened my hand to reveal peg 34. Happy days, In fact Slim ended up with Peg 13 so it would be interesting to see how he fared on it.

With just a short walk from the car park to peg 34 there was no rush to set up, and I helped Dave Collier with his box to his peg (30) as he’d left it on 34 overnight, having fished it during the evening match.
With nobody on peg 35, Vince of course just had to draw peg 36 (you couldn’t make it up) so we were bound to have some fun during the match one way or another.
Neo was down on 38 with Webbo on 40 and Budgie on 2 while Jon had peg 4 as his home for the match. Opposite me was Clive on peg 6 with Tony(spamwham) on peg 7 with Steve on peg 8 for company, and I had a feeling that we would spend plenty of the match watching that trio bagging up off those flyers.

With the match not starting till 1·30pm we had plenty of time to set up and I decided to tie some new rigs up. The 1st was a 4X12 Malman Adam to 0·20 with a size 12 Guru QM hook to fish 8mm banded pellet on the deck at 9-10mtrs straight out, no further as the wind was gusting from right to left across the peg, while the 2nd and 3rd were 0·3g Malman MTD1′s again on 0·20 with size 12 Guru QM hooks to fish the margins on both sides and double up as up in the water rigs. Bait was 8 & 6mm pellets + some sweetcorn and some paste if needed, while feed was just 6mm fishery pellets.

Well 1·30pm finally rolled around and Malc called the All-In. I shipped out 2 large pots of pellet onto the 9mtr line and fed more by hand down both margins as well as a spot about 3mtrs out to my left where John Bennett had told me he’d had a lot of fish from in the past. Vince appeared to be starting on paste at around 5mtrs (which is what he caught on during the evening match) and it looked like Clive was shipping out a paste rig over on peg 6 as well……

I could see a few bubbles starting to appear on the 9mtr line but missed the first couple of lightning fast bites, before I briefly connected with a fish that was obviously foul hooked before the rig came flying back. Tony and Steve were both off the mark already though, in fact Tony seemed to have a bite every time he lowered his rig in !!!

I finally connected with one of Rolf’s super fit Commons and after a couple of minutes had it safely in the net…

Now at this point I must apologise to Malc, as I decided to weigh the fish to get a feel for just how they were weighing, the fish turned out to be just 8½lbs so rather than record it I decided to put it straight into my keepnet, however Vince remarked to me that there was no weight sheet at the weigh station, so I phoned him to let him know, however when Malc arrived the weigh sheet was under the crate (in case of rain) meaning a wasted trip round the lake for Malc, schoolboy error on my part Sorry Malc.

Back to the fishing, and I noticed that Webbo had started to sneak the odd one out down on peg 40 and appeared to be in with a good chance of taking yet another Golden Nugget off me ……

Budgie over on peg 2 had the look of a man who was a bit shocked, this being his 1st visit to Rolf’s and who was beginning to realise that he was a little under-gunned in the tackle department, and that people hadn’t exaggerated just what was needed to tackle the fish at Rolf’s………

Meanwhile Clive was having a bit of a struggle on peg 6 and was just having to be patient while he waited for the fish to hopefully turn up, He wasn’t helped though by hearing the constant splashing that was coming from pegs 7 & 8 as Tony and Steve continued to catch regularly ……

My next fish was a lovely Common of around 12½lbs that was to prove to be my biggest of the day……

 and Vince kindly did the honours with the camera (Webbo even phoned to say I was being cruel to Vince, not only getting him to check the weight, but having him take a picture as well)…………

I had a look at JB’s spot and while it did produce one Carp for me that was all, and with nothing from either margin it was back to 9mtrs for me  as it seemed to at least produce regular bites if not lots of them……………

Jon was tucked away over on peg 4, and while not taking it apart he was quietly slipping the odd fish into the net with a minimum of fuss.

Webbo appeared to be having a bit of an eventful match however, earlier he’d smashed a top kit trying to net an angry foul hooker, but it went from bad to worse when he placed a top kit on his box and sat on it to hold it in place whilst playing a fish so that he could feed his swim and the fish pulled it in. True to form, Malc appeared to try and rescue it, but it had vanished from sight before he had a chance to leap in ………

Vince remarked that it was surprising that more gear wasn’t lost at Rolf’s, given the way that some of the fish fight, indeed he had a struggle on his hands of his own as a particularly fit Common led him a merry dance, before he got the upper hand, and I returned the favour with the camera……

Meanwhile Clive had started to experience an upturn in sport after 3 hours of struggling and seemed to be having regular tug of war matches with a number of lumps, the vast majority of which appeared to be weighers……

I was just ticking along at around 3 fish an hour , and it didn’t seem to matter what I tried I couldn’t up the rate, however it was enough to keep me ahead of Vince, despite him having a bit more on the board in terms of weighers than me.

Tony and Steve continued to catch, though it was noticeable that Tony was making very few trips up to the scales……

Clive however was flying by now, and it seemed that every time I looked over in his direction he was attached to another beast that was trying it’s best to drag him off his platform, in fact he was doing battle as Malc called the All-Out at 6·30pm…

Then as if on cue it started to rain, just so we could get a soaking as we packed up and started the weigh-in. I was 1st to weigh and I was pleasantly surprised to find that I’d managed a ‘Ton’ with a weight of 101¼lbs. Vince couldn’t match that with a weight of 61lbs so handed over yet another Golden Nugget to yours truly. Dave despite his problems however managed to put 106¾lbs on the scales meaning that he at least recouped a Golden Nugget from me to offset the loss of top kits. The next serious contender was Clive and he put a highly impressive 192¼lbs on the scales and place himself firmly in the lead. Tony put 133lbs on the scales, he probably caught the most fish on the day, but suffered from them being mostly around the 5lb mark. In fact Steve almost edged out Tony with 127lbs (less fish but more weighers. Young Mitch did the business with 116lbs 2ozs from peg 9 and Simon E put a fine 163¼lbs on the scales from peg 11, while Slim had suffered a bit of a ‘Mugger Moment©’ on my nemesis peg (13) with just 29½lbs. Malc had 152½lbs and Al just missed out on a ton from peg 18 with 94lbs. Paul weighed a creditable 110¼lbs from peg 19 while poor Gem only manage a meagre 1¼lb of silvers from peg 21 meaning everyone had avoided a Minxing today. Simon extracted a measure of revenge on Gem with 94½lbs from peg 23. The winner on the day however was young Ryan with an excellent bag from peg 26 that weighed 196¾lbs, Well Done Ryan. Fred was the last to break the Ton today with 142½lbs from peg 28.

So there you have it, there were an awful lot of very tired anglers at the end of it, especially those that had fished the evening match as well, but they all agreed that it had been worth it.

Next up for me should be a Marsh AC match on Nick’s Lake at Hartleylands Farm in a couple of weeks time.

Position	Peg	Angler	Weight
1st	Peg 26	Ryan Hughes	196lbs 12ozs
2nd	Peg 6	Clive Pritchard	192lbs 04ozs
3rd	Peg 11	Simon Enticott	163lbs 04ozs
4th	Peg 14	Malc Doyle	152lbs 12ozs
5th	Peg 28	Fred Parker	142lbs 08ozs
6th	Peg 7	Tony Roberts	133lbs 00ozs
7th	Peg 8	Steve Wilson	127lbs 00ozs
8th	Peg 9	Mitch Auger	116lbs 02ozs
9th	Peg 19	Paul Roberts	110lbs 04ozs
10th	Peg 40	Dave Webster        (guest)	106lbs 12ozs
11th	Peg 34	Peter Morton	101lbs 04ozs
12th	Peg 23	Simon Mound	94lbs 08ozs
13th	Peg 18	Alan Loader	94lbs 00ozs
14th	Peg 36	Vince Gould            (guest)	61lbs 00ozs
15th	Peg 4	Jon Hatch	59lbs 12ozs
16th	Peg 30	Dave Collier	58lbs 04ozs
17th	Peg 15	Terry Goff	58lbs 00ozs
18th	Peg 2	Marcus Burgess      (guest)	54lbs 12ozs
19th	Peg 13	Ade Williams	45lbs 02ozs
20th	Peg 32	Keith Fellows	42lbs 04ozs
21st	Peg 17	Alex Clark              (guest)	41lbs  13ozs
22nd	Peg 24	Nick Watkins-Price	27lbs 08ozs
23rd	Peg 38	Nick Williams	26lbs 04ozs
24th	Peg 10	Andy Spruce	21lbs 08ozs
25th	Peg 21	Gemma Doyle	1lbs 04ozs

You will have noticed that I mentioned the JINX 2009 SPECIAL EVENING MATCH that was fished between the hours of 6·30pm and 11·30pm on the Friday night, and although I didn’t fish this match myself, I’ve included the result from that match below for the reference of anyone who’s interested.

Position	Peg	Angler	Weight
1st	Peg 16	Simon Enticott	242lbs 04ozs
2nd	Peg 30	Steve Wilson	225lbs 04ozs
3rd	Peg 2	Vince Gould	202lbs 02ozs
4th	Peg 28	Paul Roberts	144lbs 00ozs
5th	Peg 23	Mitch Auger	141lbs 12ozs
6th	Peg 24	Clive Pritchard	139lbs 04ozs
7th	Peg 26	Ryan Hughes	123lbs 08ozs
8th	Peg 38	Simon Mound	113lbs 12ozs
9th	Peg 10	Jon Hatch	113lbs 08ozs
10th	Peg 13	Malc Doyle	112lbs 08ozs
11th	Peg 8	Terry Goff	107lbs 12ozs
12th	Peg 4	Alan Loader	96lbs 00ozs
13th	Peg 32	Fred Parker	92lbs 00ozs
14th	Peg 9	Keith Fellows	86lbs 12ozs
15th	Peg 40	Tony Roberts	86lbs 04ozs
16th	Peg 18	Marcus Burgess	81lbs 10ozs
17th	Peg 6	Nick Williams	71lbs 00ozs
18th	Peg 34	Dave Collier	57lbs 08ozs
19th	Peg 14	Gemma Doyle	34lbs 08ozs