Well as Maria had to work late today I thought I’d grab the opportunity of a few hours down at Elphicks, and see if I could catch another couple of species for the Maggotdrowning.com Fishing Race.
I had a leisurely drive down and after stopping for brekkie arrived about 10am.
A quick chat with the lads in the onsite tackle shop confirmed my worst fears, as it hadn’t been fishing well,and with heavy rain yesterday, and more showers promised for today + a falling barometer, things didn’t look too promising.
I drove up to Sandwich lake and was greeted with a howling wind and the first of the many showers to come. Comfort being the order of the day I chose peg 11 as the wind would be at my back.
The plan of attack was to feed a few micro pellets and a pinch of damp pellet crumb + 3 grains of corn every put in, to the left of the concrete overflow at 9 mtrs in about 5 feet of water using a rig consisting of an 8 elastic and a Preston 4×14 durafloat shotted with a bulk of 10′s on 0·10 to a 0·08 hooklength ending in a size 18 PR24 fishing a single grain of corn.
The three lads fishing the bank to my right were all on the feeder,but were only getting the odd small Roach.
Well it was a very slow start and after an hour without a bite I was beginning to think it wasn’t going to happen, when all of a sudden the float slid away, Strike! NOTHING……. MISSED IT!!!!!!
Back out and 5 mins later it went again, This time I connected and was relieved to feel a pleasing resistance, and a minute or two later there in the net was a nice Bream of about 3lb.
After that I didn’t look back as slowly but surely one after another came to the net in the course of the next 4 hours. The smallest was about 2lb while the largest may have scraped 4lbs.
All in all I had 28 of them.
A real nice session, given the conditions but the real icing on the cake was the 3 Tench that decided to add themselves to the mix.
Firstly this one at about 3lb spiced things up…………………
but the last one was the clincher in an already good session, My 1st Goldie of the year
So there you have it…….. 5 hours & 70lbs+ from what some may call a “Commercial Puddle”. A decent days fishing, given the conditions.
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.
Hawthorne AC
AT Supercup match.
Well today was the day of our 1st round match in this years Angling Times/Van Den Eynde Supercup.
For reasons best known to the Angling Times, this year instead of being drawn against another team from Kent we had been drawn away against Palmers Green Angling Society From North London.
Their 1st choice of venue, The Grand Union Canal at Berkhampstead was unavailable so they switched the tie to the Horseshoe Match Lake at Tylers Common in Essex, A venue that none of us from Hawthorne had seen yet alone fished.
To make matters worse on arrival the Match Lake was frozen solid, and the match was transferred to two adjoining lakes on the venue.
Fine you may think except we had been given some very good advise with regard to rigs and bait needed for the match lake where a 12oz fish was considered a big bonus, and were now confronted with two lakes supposedly heavily stocked with large Carp, Bream and Tench.
Well the draw was made and we all made our way to our pegs, and tried to assemble enough kit between us to tackle the pegs we were faced with.
Now can someone please tell me why a commercial fishery that charges £7 a peg can’t provide decent paths and solid pegs????????
Almost without exception everyone found themselves sitting in a sea of mud and standing water.
The match itself was absolutely DIRE with a howling wind making the temp of +3C feel more like -5C, and making pole fishing all but impossible in most pegs!!!!!!!!
3 hours into the match and NOBODY had had so much as a bite, and then one of the Palmers Green lads caught a Carp of around a couple of pounds.
Efforts were redoubled, Surely 1 fish would not be enough to win the match? If we could just get 1 fish then we would be in with a chance.
Sure enough with just 10mins to go, Paul Ollerenshaw (our club champ) could be seen very gingerly playing a fish,and while our whole team collectively held it’s breath (and the other team probably willed him to lose it) up came the landing net with the fish in it.
Now for the moment of truth, The weigh-in……… With 10 blank sections, and one fish in each of the remaining 2 it was all down to weight.
First to weigh-in was the Palmers Green angler and his Carp weighed in at 1lb 15ozs, now across to the other side of the fishery, and Paul’s Carp was obviously larger and took the scales round to 4lbs 3ozs 8drms.
It has to be said that Palmers Green anglers are a superb bunch of lads, who despite their obvious disappointment, shook hands in congratulation and wished us well in further rounds. The whole atmosphere of the match was so friendly that plans are already afoot to invite them down to our neck of the woods sometime in the summer for a days “baggin” .
So that’s it, Hawthorne AC are through to the next round.
Hawthorne AC club match.
Well today was the first Hawthorne AC club match of the New Year and the first chance that I’d had to get out since before Christmas. Looking out of the window as I woke up, my first reaction was that it had snowed again, but no it was just a very severe frost.
On the way down to the lakes at Frant the outside temperature was registering -7° centigrade, and it was with some apprehension that we pulled into the car park, Only to be greeted by the site of all six lakes frozen solid.
Thankfully the food wagon was up and running, so after a fortifying egg & bacon sandwich and a steaming mug of tea we made our way down to Lake 4 which had allegedly been ice free the day before, armed with a selection of weights, chains and ropes to try and free up some swims.
To say this was not a success would be an understatement, in fact we were on the point of calling it a day and cancelling the match when help appeared in the shape of the owners son with the fishery ARGOCAT.
Eventually enough swims were cleared, and a vote was taken to cut the match short to 4 hours to prevent to much suffering and frostbite.
Into the drawbag and peg 13 (unlucky for some) stuck to my hand.
Over to the far side of the lake where the low sun was straight in my eyes. A bit of deft work with the landing net cleared enough floating ice out of the way to allow me to start fishing at about 7mtrs.
I decided to keep things simple and fish a fluro pinkie on the hook and just drip a few in with a kinder pot. Well I got some bites that I managed to convert to a few fish (all small) but enough to keep my mind off the temperature which managed to struggle up to a positively tropical +1° centigrade during the course of the match.
A slow but steady procession of small Roach, Rudd, Perch, Gudgeon and Skimmers produced a netfull that was enough to swing the scales round to 5lbs 2ozs at the end of the match which gave me 3rd place.
Not the biggest bag of fish by any means, but very satisfying given the conditions, and certainly better than a day spent decorating.
Hawthorne AC club match.
Ho Ho Ho!!!!! Time for the Christmas Fur & Feather Match. This is really just a fun match and everyone is guaranteed a prize at the end of the day, and funnily enough this meant the best turn out of the season so far!!
Now Lucks Lane Lake couldn’t be described as the prettiest venue going, especially in the winter. It’s an old irrigation reservoir that is raised up from the surrounding orchards, thus catching any weather that’s going, and today there was plenty!!!!!! Oh and did I mention that the Eurostar trains thunder past about 50 yards away every 20 mins?
In it’s defence it’s one of those venues that normally produces a few fish regardless of conditions. Being that today was basically a social event, I was just looking for a bit of comfort, so it was up with the brolly and out with a feeder to try and snare one of the lumpier Carp that inhabit the venue. I hate fishing the pole in the cold & rain so that got left in the rodbag.
Between wandering around and chatting to most of the members I did actually manage to catch one, A nice Mirror Carp of 7lbs 10ozs which was good enough for 8th place on the day which won me a bottle of Scotch by way of a bit of Christmas cheer.
