Marsh AC club match.

 A Private Lake in East Sussex is the venue today for the Marsh AC club match. It's a lovely secluded venue tucked away in the countryside which is capable of throwing up some very good weights if you catch it on a good day. Hopefully today will prove to be one of those days.

I'll let you know on my return .

Position	Peg	Angler		Weight
1st	Peg 5	Al Loader		102lbs 08ozs
2nd	Peg 15	Mick Wright		90lbs 00ozs
3rd	Peg 13	Dave Collier		60lbs 08ozs
4th	Peg 12	Vic Nigent		52lbs 08ozs
5th	Peg 6	Clive Pritchard		51lbs 04ozs
6th	Peg 8	Keith Ashby		32lbs 04ozs
7th	Peg 3	Tony Roberts		31lbs 00ozs
8th=	Peg 7	Peter Morton		24lbs 08ozs
8th=	Peg 10	Simon Watkins		24lbs 08ozs
10th	Peg 14	Terry Goff		13lbs 04ozs
11th	Peg 1	Kevin Loveland		13lbs 00ozs
12th	Peg 9	Ken Walker		8lbs 00ozs
13th	Peg 2	Rod Turner		6lbs 08ozs
14th	Peg 4	Tony Watkins	Guest	5lbs 00ozs
15th	Peg 11	Jim Boase		4lbs 08ozs

 

The Jinx Series 2012
Match 5

It's the penultimate round of The Jinx Series today and there's at least 8 anglers still in with a chance of taking the title this year. One of those is Simon who is so in tune with the lake that he's has been winning matches for fun at Rolf's recently including the 2 previous Jinx matches, added to that he's also the current Lake King so he'll take some stopping.

What will today bring? I'll let you know on my return.

Overall Result

Position	Peg	Angler		Weight
1st	Peg 16	Steve Wilson		193lbs 07ozs
2nd	Peg 24	Clive Pritchard		122lbs 02ozs
3rd	Peg 18	Simon Mound		102lbs 06ozs
4th	Peg 22	Simon Watkins	Guest	98lbs 12ozs
5th	Peg 14	Malc (The Jinx) Doyle		75lbs 05ozs
6th	Peg 28	Dave Collier		70lbs 01ozs
7th	Peg 30	Mat Edwards		54lbs 04ozs
8th	Peg 32	Fred Parker		52lbs 15ozs
9th	Peg 40	Ade Williams		51lbs 10ozs
10th	Peg 2	Neil Riddy		49lbs 07ozs
11th	Peg 8	Geoff Palmer		43lbs 08ozs
12th	Peg 38	Nick Watkins-Price		37lbs 12ozs
13th	Peg 34	Paul Roberts		33lbs 10ozs
14th	Peg 4	Marcus Burgess		29lbs 11ozs
15th	Peg 26	Tony Roberts		29lbs 02ozs
16th	Peg 10	Kevin Loveland		24lbs 15ozs
17th	Peg 6	Nick Williams		17lbs 12ozs
18th	Peg 36	Peter Morton		16lbs 12ozs
19th	Peg 9	Dai Thomas		12lbs 03ozs
20th	Peg 13	Terry Goff		4lbs 01ozs
21st	Peg 7	Gem (The Minx) Doyle		11ozs

No names in Pink as nobody got "MINXED"

A Section

Position	Peg	Angler	Weight	Points
1st	Peg 40	Ade Williams	51lbs 10ozs	1
2nd	Peg 2	Neil Riddy	49lbs 07ozs	2
3rd	Peg 38	Nick Watkins-Price	37lbs 12ozs	3
4th	Peg 34	Paul Roberts	33lbs 10ozs	4
5th	Peg 4	Marcus Burgess	29lbs 11ozs	5
6th	Peg 6	Nick Williams	17lbs 12ozs	6
7th	Peg 36	Peter Morton	16lbs 12ozs	7

B Section

Position	Peg	Angler	Weight	Points
1st	Peg 30	Mat Edwards	54lbs 04ozs	1
2nd	Peg 32	Fred Parker	52lbs 15ozs	2
3rd	Peg 8	Geoff Palmer	43lbs 08ozs	3
4th	Peg 10	Kevin Loveland	24lbs 15ozs	4
5th	Peg 9	Dai Thomas	12lbs 03ozs	5
6th	Peg 13	Terry Goff	4lbs 01ozs	6
7th	Peg 7	Gem (The Minx) Doyle	11ozs	7

C Section

Position	Peg	Angler	Weight	Points
1st	Peg 16	Steve Wilson	193lbs 07ozs	1
2nd	Peg 24	Clive Pritchard	122lbs 02ozs	2
3rd	Peg 18	Simon Mound	102lbs 06ozs	3
4th	Peg 22	Simon Watkins	98lbs 12ozs	Guest
5th	Peg 14	Malc (The Jinx) Doyle	75lbs 05ozs	4
6th	Peg 28	Dave Collier	70lbs 01ozs	5
7th	Peg 26	Tony Roberts	29lbs 02ozs	6

Overall Points Table with one match to go

Position	Name	Match 1	Match 2	Match 3	Match 4	Match 5	Match 6	Points	Weight
1st	Mat Edwards	5	1	2	2	1		6	359lbs 13ozs
2nd	Simon Mound	4	3	1	1	3		8	571lbs 08ozs
3rd	Neil Riddy	2	2	3	2	2		8	402lbs 14ozs
4th	Clive Pritchard	3	2	2	5	2		9	408lbs 03ozs
5th	Steve Wilson	1	4	4	3	1		9	535lbs 00ozs
6th	Kevin Loveland	4	5	1	1	4		10	300lbs 06ozs
7th	Ade Williams	1	3	5	9	1		10	293lbs 10ozs
8th	Peter Morton	5	1	2	3	7		11	348lbs 12ozs
9th	Fred Parker	3	2	4	4	2		11	221lbs 11ozs
10th	Malc (The Jinx) Doyle	2	1	7	6	4		13	366lbs 09ozs
11th	Dai Thomas	3	4	1	5	5		13	287lbs 06ozs
12th	Tony Roberts	2	6	5	2	6		15	283lbs 10ozs
13th	Dave Collier	9	4	2	4	5		15	253lbs 04ozs
14th	Paul Roberts	7	7	6	1	4		18	219lbs 13ozs
15th	Nick Watkins-Price	6	5	5	6	3		19	211lbs 05ozs
16th	Nick Williams	6	6	4	4	6		20	211lbs 05ozs
17th	Marcus Burgess	9	3	7	5	5		20	188lbs 09ozs
18th	Gem (The Minx) Doyle	1	7	6	6	7		20	155lbs 08ozs
19th	Terry Goff	7	5	7	3	6		21	187lbs 02ozs
20th	Geoff Palmer	4	9	6	9	3		22	144lbs 04ozs
21st	Dave Moore	5	6	3	9	9		23	163lbs 12ozs

 

Marsh AC club match.

 Essex is the destination for me today with another Marsh AC club match at Colemans Cottage on Wood Lake. It's a venue that's always popular with the club members and today is our second visit this year so hopefully it will provide a good days fishing for the lads. I was awake before the alarm went off and soon had the cats fed and a couple of cups of coffee drunk before loading up the car before sunrise. I couldn't help noticing how cold it felt though , the car themometer registering just 11°C and for the first time in a while I put the car heater on as I set off. It's a great time to be travelling though with little traffic on the roads and as I cleared the Dartford Tunnel the sun was just rising, promising a lovely day ahead weather wise .

I pulled into the fishery car park at just past 7am and indeed it appeared that I was the first one to arrive. A quick look at the lake revealed that the level was down from our previous visit with the platforms a good 2 feet clear of the water.
Gerry and Jayne has opened the lodge so the first order of the day was one of Jayne's large breakfasts to set me up for the day ahead. Lee was next to arrive, he was guesting today and is always good company so we were soon catching up as breakfast was consumed and the others arrived. I then got a phonecall from Terry, his car wouldn't start so he wouldn't be joining us today .

With breakfast out of the way Dave soon had the money collected and got the draw out of the way. Peg 27 was to be mine for the match, not one I was familiar with , so gathering up my kit I set off to get aquainted with it .

Arriving at the peg it turned out that I had Dave on peg 25 for company on my right and young Zack to my left on peg 29, with Lee and Chris opposite on pegs 13 and 15.

The carp run to a decent size in Wood Lake and the Barbel are getting bigger all the time so I made up 3 rigs, the first for straight out in front at 5mtrs where I had around 3½ft of water was a 0·4g NG XT Mugger HD on 0·18 Ultima power match straight through to size 16 Kamasan B911Xs while the other 2 were for the margin while the other 2 were 0·2g NG Springer Sampson Margin's on on 0·18 Ultima power match with size 14 Kamasan B911X's. Feed would be a mix of corn and damp 4mm pellet while hookbaits would be a mix of pellet, corn and some paste.

10am and Dave called the All-In and I fed both margin lines then dropped a banded 6mm over a few loose pellets on the 5mtr line. A few of the lads were into quick fish but I wasn't one of those and 30 minutes in I still hadn't had as much as a bite so I fed a full pot of pellet and corn to see if it would tempt anything in. Well after about 5 minutes the swim started fizzing like a jacuzzi but the bites still refused to come . However Tony over on peg 11 had started to put one or two fish together ......

Finally after around 45 minutes the float slowly slid away and a gentle lift saw a pleasing amount of elastic stretching from the top kit, The fish was quickly subdued and slid over the landing net, a common of around 3½lbs to finally get me off the mark . Back out but it appeared that it had been a solitary fish as no more bites were forthcoming, a bit more feed and a few more bubbles but no bites despite varying the depth and the baits I just couldn't buy another bite.

Chris was opposite on peg 15 and I've often taken the micky out of him telling him that his kit looks like a throw back to the 70's but he was definately having the last laugh on me today as he started to take fish from his peg while I could only look on enviously .......

After 90 minutes I noticed a couple of carp moving in the left hand margin, normally I would have left it longer but I was already getting deperate so dropped a banded 8mm in there. The float buried almost straight away and I connected with a big fish that powered off towards Zack, but almost straight away the rig came pinging back with a large scale on the hook .

A look down the other margin with corn looked like being no more productive until the float vanished from sight, yeilding a common around the 5lb mark to add to my meagre total. Lee was having no such problems over on peg 13 however though he was surprised at just how hard the fish fought, giving his hydro a good work out ......

Another try on the 5mtr line finally produced a couple of F1's after around half an hour but again nothing followed them. I could see odd fish constantly moving through the swim in front of me but nothing appeared to want to settle. Was it because the water was down and I was sitting so high up above the water? had the cold nights upset things? I couldn't work it out today whatever it was .

Chris's guest Gary Luck was over on peg 13 and it looked as if he was pretty much in the same boat as me, as I could see his swim fizzing but only producing the odd fish for him ......

Back to the margins for me and I finally managed to tempt another couple of carp from the left hand side, but in all honesty I was going nowhere fast. Around 2pm Chrissy arrived with Dave's two grandchildren Lily and Alfie who both wanted to catch a fish with Grandad. It's a good job they hadn't arrived earlier or they would have undoubtedly battered me today .

More in desperation than anything else I took my feeder rod out and decided to give that a go, but after 3 casts that tangled and snapped off, pretty much summing up the match for me in a nutshell . Meanwhile young Alfie was getting well into helping Grandad catch and land his fish ......

John (tutu) was suffering a similar match to mine over on peg 21 but as the match drew to a close started to find one or two fish from his margin ......

I battled on with the margins and actually managed to get another couple of carp before Dave called the All-Out at 4pm.
I have to say that I was glad to hear the whistle today, 6 hours for just 8 fish for around 30lbs wasn't the outcome I'd expected and with hindsight I got it horribly wrong, getting sidetracked by fish I could see in the margins despite them not wanting to co-operate today.

It took me a while to get the kit packed away meaning that I didn't follow the Weigh-In round as usual and when it got round to me Keith was leading with 118lbs from peg 3 from Tony with 88lbs. Dave with Lily and Alfie's help had 85½lbs. My fish weighed a level 30 lbs and Zack had 54½lbs leaving me like a bit of cod "battered both sides" . The Weigh-In moved on at pace as it does at Colemans and I made my way back to the car park with my kit and loaded it away.

Back at the lodge for the results and Jean had asked Jayne to lay on a buffet complete with Birthday Cake ......

........ for Kevin's Birthday (which was on Sunday) and I have to say it offered the best bites of the day as far as I was concerned.

Dave announced the results after everyone had tucked in and the winner today was Al with a fine 139lbs from peg 35 Keith was second with 118lbs and regained the MK Nugget from Mick and Tony was 3rd on the day .

The next club match is at The Private Lake in East Sussex in a couple of weeks time, but before that next Saturday is the penultimate round of The Jinx Series at Rolf's Lake which will hopefully give me the chance to get this match out of my system .

Position	Peg	Angler		Weight
1st	Peg 35	Al Loader		139lbs 00ozs
2nd	Peg 3	Keith Ashby		118lbs 00ozs
3rd	Peg 11	Tony Roberts		88lbs 00ozs
4th	Peg 25	Dave Collier		85lbs 08ozs
5th	Peg 13	Lee Rose	Guest	75lbs 08ozs
6th	Peg 37	Clive Pritchard		72lbs 08ozs
7th	Peg 23	Mick Wright		71lbs 04ozs
8th	Peg 33	Simon Watkins		65lbs 04ozs
9th	Peg 19	Jim Boase		57lbs 00ozs
10th	Peg 29	Zack Johnson		54lbs 08ozs
11th=	Peg 15	Chris Withall		54lbs 00ozs
11th=	Peg 9	Kevin Loveland		54lbs 00ozs
13th	Peg 39	Eddie Dobson		46lbs 00ozs
14th	Peg 5	Graham Manning		36lbs 00ozs
15th	Peg 21	John Holdsworth		31lbs 00ozs
16th	Peg 27	Peter Morton		30lbs 00ozs
17th	Peg 7	Martin Hucker		29lbs 00ozs
18th	Peg 1	Ron Mannister		21lbs 00ozs
19th	Peg 25	Lily & Alfie Bondeau	Guests	18lbs 08ozs
20th	Peg 17	Gary Luck	Guest	15lbs 08ozs
21st	Peg 31	Tony Watkins	Guest	14lbs 00ozs

 

Marsh AC
Alders Farm Fishery

Once again I'm travelling up toward Milton Keynes to Alders Farm Fishery just outside the village of Great Brickhill. It's for a Marsh AC match that's been arranged by club member Keith Ashby who lives reasonably close to the fishery. Today is really just a friendly knock up though with a few of the venue regulars invited to make up the numbers today, but it's a fantastic venue that's capable of throwing up some mega match weights, so well worth taking the day off work for .

Living down in South London an early start was called for to avoid the London rush hour, so the alarm went off at some ungodly hour and with the cats fed and a couple of cups of coffee consumed, the car was loaded up in the dark and I was on my way by 5·30am. The plan worked a treat and gave me a clear run up the M1 and A5 meaning I pulled into the car park just after 7am . Trev's van was already parked up and young Mark Quick has obviously been dropped off as he was sitting on his box surrounded by the rest of his kit in splendid isolation.

Dinah soon appeared and set up the dip so we could rinse our nets off and Trev staggered into view with a couple of gallons of maggots that he had to riddle off ready for the anglers today. With that done it was time to open the shop and we were soon chatting over the prospects for the day ahead as other anglers started to arrive including Keith, the organiser of todays match and pretty soon the banter was starting to flow back and forth . Anyway with some fishery pellets purchased my stomach was telling me it was time to make my way down to The Pumphouse for breakfast, so I collected my kit and headed off down the hill.

Dinah already had breakfast under way when I got there, in fact Kevin and Jean were already tucking in . A coffee and a full English soon had me ready to face the day ahead as the rest of todays anglers arrived. One of those was Mal Talbot who Trev describes as 'Mad as a box of frogs ' but he's fished at the top level for many years and now helps out presenting the Alders Farm and GOT Baits video's that Trev produces, so spends a fair bit of time at the fishery. Standing out on the veranda taking in the sunshine you could see that there were plenty of fish moving, an encouraging sign but with the recent colder nights I had a feeling that it could be a little harder than expected today .

Around about 9·30am Keith called everyone to order (no small task ) and got the draw under way. Into the bag and peg 34 finds it's way to me. I was more than happy with that as Vic had told me it was a good peg to draw .

So off to collect my kit and make the short trip to the peg. Kev was settling into peg 38 along with Dave on peg 36, while to my right I could see Mal on peg 32, so no pressure there then !!!

Peg 34 is a lovely looking peg that had a decent view over the rest of the lake, There's a big bush overhanging the water to the left and a smaller one in the margin to the right. It's quite shallow with a maximum of around 2 feet of water but that doesn't normally have an adverse effect on the fishing.

I set up 3 identical rigs that were freshly tied, all 0·2g NG Springer Sampson Margin's on on 0·21 Ultima power match with size 16 Kamasan B911X's to finish them off that would be fished on a top 2 +1 at around 18 inches deep. Bait was simply 4mm fishery pellets that I damped down for feeding while hook baits were just hard 6mm's along with corn as a change bait.

With a bit of time before the All -In I strolled round for a chat with Mal and found him perched on his trusty red ASI making the most of the glorious sunshine ......

 and was soon joined by Dave and Kevin. After a while I left them chatting and made my way back to my peg for a quick check that everything was ready before we started. At 11am Keith called the All-In so I fed some pellet along the bush to my left and some pellet and corn into the right hand margin before shipping a banded pellet out to the bush. a couple of tentative dinks before the float vanished but the lift offered little resistance before a rudd surfaced and promptly fell of the hook, not the start that I was looking for , so I re-fed and dropped in again. This time the float just buried and a lot more resistance this time as a hooked carp tore off in the shallow water. I soon had it under control however and in the net, a 2½lb mirror to get me up and running. It was steady away from there on in if I'm honest, I wasn't catching quickly but I did catch steadily, the only real problem was lost fish, but with hooked fish charging off when they're hooked in shallow water it's inevitable that you'll lose a few if the hook hold isn't spot on.

I could see that Mal appeared to be matching me fish for fish, but looking round the rest of the lake, although people were catching, it didn't appear to be at the expected rate that the lake is capable of. Indeed after around an hour Dave appeared to see how I was doing and reckoned that he only had around 15lbs to show for his efforts .

I just kept feeding the two lines but concentrated on the left hand bush as I didn't want to disturb the margin to early. After a couple of hours I had around 25 fish in the nets and could see that Vic over on peg 2 appeared to be putting a few together as well ......

I could hear Al over on peg 6 complaining that all he could find were small fish in the 1lb - 1½lb range, but knowing Al he was probably fibbing . Clive however seemed to be doing OK when my camera lens caught him in the act of landing a fish ......

My fish appeared to back off just before 1pm, so as is my custom I re-fed quite heavily and took a stroll with the camera to allow things to settle. Terry was tucked away on peg 29 and struggling to come to terms with it today and only taking the occasional fish ......

Keith was on peg 28 and with nobody on the next 3 pegs he was targeting the margin with corn, the fish were certainly there as he could see their tails waving at him, but getting them to take his bait was proving to be a frustrating exercise as they continued to ignore it in favour of the free offerings ......

As I made my way back Mal was still plugging away steadily taking a succession of fish in glorious sunshine, at least that's the way it appeared ......

Returning to my peg it was now in the shade and with the breeze blowing onto my back I felt the need to put my fleece on.
Back out with the bait and the fish had settled again and I took a look down the margin for the first time as I could see fish moving in and out of it. It did produce bites but the fish were much smaller than I had been taking from the bush so after around 30 minutes I reverted back to there.

With around 2 hours to go Kev was having a bit of a grueller on peg 38 as it just wasn't producing for him today, but Dave started to catch at a better rate which cheered him up no end ......

Things had obviously picked up for Al as well as he was heard to ask Keith if the match could be extended for a bit longer, a request that Keith declined .

I managed to keep the fish coming steadily till the end of the match and by the time that Keith called the All-Out at 4pm I had 67 fish in my nets. Packing away my kit Mal appeared reckoning that I'd beaten him and shook my hand. I wasn't so sure as it seemed to me that he'd been catching at a similar rate, but the scales would have the last say on that .

Trev had come down to start the weigh in on the pumphouse bank and as Dave had the club scales with him Keith started to weigh-in on our side. Kev had indeed had a frustrating day with just 28½lbs to show for his efforts . Dave's peg had come good in the last couple of hours allowing him to put 126½lbs on the scales. At my peg my fish weighed 177½lbs and Mal was proved to be right when his fish came in at 119½lbs . Simon had quietly put together 74¼lbs from peg 30 while Terry's fish registered 58½lbs. Finally Keith weighed in with a level 87lbs and with the weigh-in on our side concluded we made our way back to The Pumphouse for the results.

Trev had laid on Tea and Coffee and broken out the biscuits which was very welcome as the assembled anglers discussed their experiences of the day. Finally Keith had the results collated and was ready to announce them.
It turned out that my weight had been good enough for me to take the win today with Al taking second place and Vic taking third .

I'd just like to say a big Thank You to Keith for organising the match for us, and another Big Thank You to Dinah,Trev, and all the staff at Alders Farm, Top Breakfast, great fishing, it's hard to ask for more unless it can be moved closer to where I live .

Position	Peg	Angler	Weight
1st	Peg 34	Peter Morton	177lbs 08ozs
2nd	Peg 6	Al Loader	147lbs 00ozs
3rd	Peg 2	Vic Nugent	146lbs 04ozs
4th	Peg 10	Josh Blavins	136lbs 04ozs
5th	Peg 36	Dave Collier	126lbs 08ozs
6th	Peg 32	Mal Talbot	119lbs 08ozs
7th	Peg 7	Troy Hillier	114lbs 12ozs
8th	Peg 1	Charlie Lancaster	93lbs 08ozs
9th	Peg 28	Keith Ashby	87lbs 00ozs
10th	Peg 30	Simon Watkins	74lbs 04ozs
11th	Peg 5	Mark Quick	69lbs 08ozs
12th	Peg 8	Clive Pritchard	68lbs 12ozs
13th	Peg 3	Pete Iles	65lbs 12ozs
14th	Peg 29	Terry Goff	58lbs 08ozs
15th	Peg 16	John Holdsworth	51lbs 04ozs
16th	Peg 4	Martin Hucker	32lbs 00ozs
17th	Peg 38	Kevin Loveland	28lbs 08ozs
18th	Peg 12	Chris Withall	19lbs 00ozs