Hawthorne AC club match.
Well, the 1st match of the season for Hawthorne AC saw me driving down the M2 on the way to Lavender Farm on a bright warm sunny morning.
In the car-park all the usual suspects and a few new members were assembled for the draw, and with 25 members taking part peg 18 stuck to my hand.
Now the match lake has what you might term a profusion of reeds, not just in the margins, but also on a number of sunken islands giving nearly every peg a feature to fish to.
Peg 18
The problem today however was that the recent spell of warm weather had encouraged the Carp to play Mums & Dads. They were soon thrashing the water to foam all over the fishery and those that weren’t were cruising aimlessly in the upper layers sunning themselves.
The pegging on the match lake also leaves a little to be desired, as it is more than a little tight in places as the photo below demonstrates.
There are 10 pegs in that photo and if you aren’t careful, it’s easy to find a length of carbon hitting you in the earhole if the person behind ships back to enthusiastically.
With the match half way through I hadn’t had so much as a bite despite ringing the changes with pellet, corn & maggot in both the margins and the island at 11mtrs in front of me. Then at 1pm a small group of Carp started to cruise the reeds by the island so on went a foot of line with a 16 hook and 3 maggots and out came the catapult to spray a steady stream of maggots in their direction.
Reeds Everywhere
Now the fact that the islands are sunk means that if you’re not quick, any Carp that are hooked can swim straight through the reeds and out the other side, and 4 managed to do just that, however 11 didn’t manage it and when the scales arrived they totalled 23lbs exactly.
This gave me 7th place overall, which given the outlook half way through the match was I felt a fairly decent result.
Hawthorne AC club match.
Well it was off to Lavender Farm today for a Hawthorne AC club match.
For a bit of added interest I was being joined by 3 guests, all members of Maggotdrowning.com, in the shape of Dave the Fish, Colin the Pike and last but not least Malc “The Jinx” Doyle.
After various bits of banter in the car park it was time for the draw. Peg 92 was mine and low and behold Dave drew 93. Fortunately Malc drew on the dam wall which was about as far away from us as it was possible to get, though poor Colin only managed to get 4 pegs away. I was planning to start on the straight lead fishing corn, with a possible switch later on to the end of a dead reed bed on my left, into about 4 feet of water.
At the whistle Paul potted in 2 big cups of maggot at 11mtrs, and in his first 3 put ins had 3 carp for about 10lbs in the net. My tip meanwhile refused to move so a hasty change onto the pole and out to about 10mtrs in 9ft of water with corn on the hook, resulted in a couple of tentative bites and my first carp, but I was going backwards as Paul was off to a flyer.
At the start I had fed a couple of handfuls of micro halibut pellets into the reed bed on my left along with a few grains of corn, and after about an hour the stems started waiving as fish moved through them. I’d normally wait till later in the match before going onto that line, but I was getting battered by Paul and had to try something. Bites for the most part were tiny little dips, but slowly I felt that I was pulling back the deficit. Paul having seen me catching close, moved onto his margin and while not getting as many as me, seemed to be catching a better stamp of fish.
Dave had decided to concentrate on the other side of the reeds to me, and was slowly putting a few together. Malc was happily adjusting to a smaller stamp of Carp than he’s been used to at Drayton & Stockton, but unfortunately Colin was having a hard time of it in his peg, fish proving hard to come by.
All to soon for me the scales arrived, with Paul weighing 66lbs 06ozs for 1st place, to my level 63lbs which gave me 2nd place overall, Pauls better stamp of fish making all the difference. Dave managed 17lbs 12ozs for 8th on the day and Malc managed a creditable 34lbs 14ozs for 5th. Unfortunately Colin tipped his back without weighing.
Also today the club was fishing its Pairs Cup and with my partner on the day Mark Smith weighing in with 48lbs, we were the winners with 111lbs.
So a good day for me, and I hope that my 3 guests enjoyed themselves.
Hawthorne AC club match.
7am in the “Little Thief” for a full English breakfast, and looking out of the windows at the driving wind & rain. It’s at times like this that you start to question your own sanity .
Arriving in the car park at Lavender Farm, there were 14 other lunatics assembled to fish this club match on the Match Lake, a rather exposed “snake” venue.
Into the drawbag and 15 stuck to my already wet hand, and after walking round I was thanking my lucky stars that at least the wind was coming from behind me. The peg is regarded as a bit of a flyer in Summer, owing to the island at 12mtrs but has no winter form at all.
Out at 12mtrs nothing was having it despite a softly softly approach, and with the wind veering around constantly presentation was difficult to say the least. Plumbing around earlier I had noticed that the deepest part of the swim was at only 3mtrs and had set up a dead depth rig for this, and with nothing at 12mtrs after 2 hours this was the line I switched to.
The recent cold weather had taken a lot of colour out off the water, but with a squatt cup I trickled in 5 maggots and a pinch of fishmeal every 5mins, and after 30 mins the float buried and a small Carp of about 1lb was netted.
For the next couple of hours I managed to get another 14 fish upto about 3lbs and then that line dried up. For the last hour, try as I might I couldn’t buy another bite. At the end I managed to put 31lbs on the scales, and was comfortably in first place, right up until the final 2 pegs were weighed in and a 38lbs & 50lbs were put on the scales.
Still, no complaints, as I felt I’d got the maximum available from the peg on the day and nobody near me had got within 20lbs of my weight, and at least I managed to pick up some coin to cover expenses.
