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 .

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 .

Marsh AC club match.

I’m off down to Hartleylands Farm just outside the village of Cranbrook in Kent today for the seventh match of the Marsh AC year. It’s a match that I really look forward to fishing as it’s one of my favorite  waters with the potential for a cracking days sport . An early start was in order as I was meeting a few of the lads for breakfast at The Knoxbridge Café and with the promise of some decent weather for today it didn’t take long to get the gear loaded into the car and set off.

A nice smooth drive down saw me pulling into the car park at around 7·30am just as Al and Keith Powell who was guesting today arrived. Kevin and Jean were already there along with Keith and Mick who’d made their usual trip down from Milton Keynes and Rusty who was also guesting today and we were soon joined by John, Martin and Zack. With the pangs of hunger taken care of by a Knoxbridge Special it was time to get up to the fishery for the draw, but not before Keith Powell noticed Keith’s wallet that had dropped on the floor by his seat and phoned him to let him know he had it .

Arriving at the draw most of the usual suspects were in attendance along with our third guest today Mick the Chippy who I struck a side bet of a Golden Nugget with as usual. Dave soon had the monies collected and the draw underway. Peg 25 proved to be mine today, a short stroll from the car park and shaded by trees. Kev had peg 29 and it looked good for a few today while Mick the Chippy was next up on 28 with Rusty to my left on 26 and Mick W next up on peg 23.

Settling into the peg it was time to decide how to approach it. I’d considered fishing the pellet wag today but with the wind blowing from right to left across the peg it was going to be very awkward , so although I set one up I was pretty sure that it wasn’t going to figure. Instead it was going to be 3 pole rigs, one at 5mtrs straight out with another for the willow to my right and a third for the left hand willow. The first two were once again Nick Gilbert’s handmade 0·5g Power Pencils that were made up on 0·21 Ultima power match with size 14 Guru MWG’s to finish off with while the third rig was a 0.3 NG Edger again on 0·21 Ultima power match straight through to a size 14 Guru MWG. Bait was 4 and 6mm pellet for feed along with some hemp while hook bait would be 8mm hard pellet with some GOT Atomic paste if I needed it.

Kev provided a cup of coffee courtesy of Jean when he popped down for a chat and Dave called the All-In at 10am and I fed a couple of handfuls of hemp and pellets to the two willow swims and a handful of pellet straight out at 5mtrs before following them out with a banded 8mm to 5mtrs. I could hear that Rusty was in almost straight away but I was being plagued by sharp bites that I couldn’t connect with and I suspected that these were from roach snatching at the 8mm pellet and this was confirmed when I landed one of around 6ozs that had somehow managed to engulf the pellet.

Thankfully my first carp of the day was soon on its way, the carp in the reservoir give a good account of themselves with the deep water encouraging them to keep their heads down and making you work to get their heads up and into the net but after a spirited fight a nice mirror of around 7lbs was safely in the keepnet .

You couldn’t class the sport as fast and furious though and the general banter around the lake made it obvious that most were struggling after around an hour, apart that is from Kev who was into a steady run of fish and Mick the Chippy if the rumours were to be believed . I was picking up the odd carp on my 5mtr line but looks over at both willow swims were producing nothing apart from the odd roach and skimmer. Rusty had taken a few carp fishing shallow but they weren’t really having it either and gradually faded away.

By 12·30pm I had around 6 carp and a few silvers to show for my efforts so took a little stroll to see how others were doing on my bank. Mick W reckoned that he’d had a few but seemed to be doing OK to me judging by the amount of elastic coming from his top two as he played a carp and it was obvious that he had hopes of taking the MK Nugget from Keith today ……

but the pegs in the early twenties didn’t seem to be producing as I would have expected them to. However over on the other side the one person that did seem to be getting among a few was Terry and with the wind blowing into the margins there I fancied that he had the chance of a good weight on the cards today ……

Back down on peg 29 Kev was enjoying himself taking a succession of fish from under the willow to his left ……

Mick was enjoying himself as always but had suffered with a few lost fish in the course of the morning and looking to up his catch rate ……

and while Rusty was his usual jovial self , with his shallow line having dried up was looking to explore other lines in an effort to put a few more in the net ……

Back at my peg it was just a question of keeping some feed trickling into the three lines and waiting for some fish to turn up, which I was certain would happen at some point given the head of fish present in the water . Dave the Fish popped round for a stroll and it obviously wasn’t going well for him and you could sense his frustration with not being able to get to grips with things today .

As the afternoon wore on things did start picking up for me. I had to rotate round the three lines, but by doing this I started to pick up carp on a regular basis, nothing big, most were around the 4-5lbs mark but good weight builders if you can keep them coming.

Others weren’t so fortunate and I could hear Al bemoaning the fact that he couldn’t reach the spot where he felt the fish were in his swim ……

Things had picked up a bit for Tony, but he’d still found time to pop along and check out what Keith Powell was doing on peg 13 as it was obviously starting to produce for him ……

Keith was having one of those matches that we all dread, putting a few fish together but having to watch travelling companion Mick W catching just a few more which would surely result in the loss of an MK Nugget today ……

My afternoon was then rudely interrupted by a pain in the neck ….. I’d been stung by a bee . Fortunately Rusty came to my aid and removed the sting with the aid of a pair of styl pliers, ad hoc surgery at its finest which allowed me to resume fishing again .

Things seemed to pick up for most as the match drew to a close, unfortunately not for Dave who had to suffer more frustration as Tony on the next peg found a late run of fish to save his day while Dave got seen off by a couple of foul hookers .

The All-Out was called at 4pm and with a set of scales on our side Kevin and I decided to get the weigh-in underway before packing up. We started with Rod on peg 19 who put 26½lbs on the scales followed by Simon with 79½lbs. Next up was Graham with 33lbs and Chris with 36¾lbs. Mick W recorded 94¾lbs and my 19 carp with a few silvers weighed 114½lbs . Rusty had managed 96¾lbs but Mick the Chippy had suffered a frustrating second half to his match with just 36½lbs meaning a Golden Nugget was coming my way . Finally Kevin put his fish onto the scales and recorded 132½lbs and a new PB Match Weight ……

Time to pack away the kit and get back to the car park where Dave worked out the results and sorted out the section money. First today was Terry with a fine 163½lbs Kevin had secured second place and I had finished in third .
Today’s sections had gone to Al, Terry, Mick W and Kevin to bring an enjoyable day to a close .

The next club match is at Colemans Cottage on September 15th, but we also have a midweek match at Alders Farm a couple of days before that which Keith has kindly organised for us, so plenty to look forward to .

Marsh AC club match.

Once again it’s Rockells Farm in Essex that is the venue for the Marsh AC match today. It’s renowned as a bagging water, in fact it’s where Martin Hucker set the clubs best ever match weight of 383lbs 04ozs back in 2009 so it’s a venue that we always look forward to fishing . However I’d heard from a couple of people recently that it wasn’t producing like it had in the past. Was the reason down to the terrible weather we’ve experienced recently or had something changed? We would find out today .

I met up with Dave at his house at around 6·45am to follow down to the venue. It was already a pleasant morning with the promise of a warm sunny day ahead as we set off , but Dave must have been using his Beatles Sat Nav as we went on a Magical Mystery Tour of Stanstead Airport and the surrounding villages before we arrived at the venue car park around 8am .

Everyone was looking forward to this one and a few of the lads soon had it pegged out while Dave sorted out the money and organised the draw. Peg 14 was mine for the day, pretty much where I’d drawn last year and with plenty of water today hopefully it would produce better sport . Turning left from the car park with my kit I found Eddie, Al, Vic and Kev on the first 4 pegs. My peg was actually the one Simon had last year while Dave had the flyer on the point then Zack and Clive was back on his peg last year. Elsewhere John had peg 1 with Simon on 2 and Martin had run to his peg having drawn peg 3 the same peg he’d broken the club match record on in 2009 .

Settling into the peg I couldn’t help noticing a couple of things. The first was the water colour or lack of it, it had that somewhat slate grey appearance that you normally see when the first frosts knock the colour out of the water, and the second thing was that there didn’t appear to be any signs of fish moving . Rockells is so heavily stocked that the fish are always competing for food, colouring up the water and you normally see tail patterns and swirls along with cruising fish as you set up, but hardly anything was showing ….. Very Strange .

The venue is that prolific that the match format is slightly different from our usual in that we have two, three hour matches with a weigh -in after each to avoid keeping too many fish in keepnets for long periods and to make things easier for the scales men. Rigs a simple and strong as you’re looking to catch on a top 2 from the margins to do a really big weight and as such were just 0.3 NG Edger’s on 0·21 Ultima power match straight through to a size 16 Kamasan B911X for pellet and size 12′s for paste. Bait for today was just 6mm hard pellets and strawberry GOT Atomic paste.

With a bit of time before the start Kev strolled down with a coffee and a freshly cooked bacon and sausage roll which set me up nicely for the start .

10am saw the All-in called and some pellets were fed into both margins and right away alarm bells rang again as I could see them fall through the first 12-18 inches of water which is really unusual as the water is normally so coloured. I banded a 6mm and dropped it into the left hand margin, the float dipped and a lift produced a 1oz roach, not what I was looking for. Now normally at the start of the matches here you start to hear splashing as people are landing carp straight away but today it was very quiet, nobody was into fish straight away .

10 minutes in and I had my first carp, but it was an 8oz stockie, absolutely mint which still had the curtain in its mouth intact, definitely not what’s expected at Rockells.
I’d like to say it got better but it didn’t . Dave strolled round expressing surprise that nothing was coming to floaters and he strolled down the bank and returned with news that Al and Vic were struggling to put any fish together along with everyone else.

I’d added a couple of sections to try further out but after a couple of hours just had another 3 stockies and a few roach added to my catch so took a stroll looking for some inspiration. Kev was fishing a feeder but was in the same predicament as the rest of us…….

Strolling down to Al he was trying his margins, but all the while we chatted he didn’t have a single bite yet alone a fish ……

Vic was totally disheartened with the lack of fish as well and it was fast becoming obvious that all was not well ……

I strolled back up to see Clive and it was the same story at his peg, just the odd stockie and roach showing, Zack was fairing no better, but Dave was getting the odd stockie from the margins and this was probably due to the fact that he only fed floaters at the start so didn’t overfeed the swim ……

John was on peg 1 and was getting a few, but nowhere near the quantity expected ……

Just before 1pm Dave strolled down with another coffee and bacon and sausage roll for me and with no sign of any improvement we cancelled the first weigh -in and decided to fish straight through. Meanwhile over on peg 9 Ken had managed to connect with a decent sized carp and after carefully playing it had it safely in the net and weighed at 11¼lbs before returning it . I heard that Tony was getting a few but couldn’t really see him although I could see Keith who was having the odd fish ……

Vic had decided that he’d had enough in the meantime and tipped back and gone home , and I have to admit that the idea had crossed my mind as well .

Around 2pm there was one hell of a splash from Kev’s peg, he’d tripped and lost his footing as he returned to his peg and gone straight in, by the time I got round to see if he was alright he was back on the bank and draining out and declined my invitation to get back in so I could get a photo ……

Meanwhile over on peg 8 Graham had latched onto something that was capable of stretching his elastic as he was fortunate enough to latch onto a decent carp ……

I kept searching the swim adding sections exploring further out but to no real effect as no matter where I tried it just produced the odd stockie or tiny roach and it was a blessed relief when the All-Out was called at 4pm . I really couldn’t wait to get the kit packed away and the weigh-in had to be one of the quickest in the clubs recent history. on our bank Eddie had 7¼lbs, Al 10¾lbs and Kev had 6¾lbs. My few fish made 9lbs. Dave had the best weight on our bank with 19½lbs, Zack had a meagre 3½lbs and Clive ended with 11½lbs.

The owner appeared while we were weighing in and when I asked him about the lack of fish he was adamant that no fish had been lost or netted and no stockies had been introduced, but I’m afraid that I don’t believe that to be the truth and as a result of what we experienced today I think it’s fair to say that we won’t be returning to Rockells any time soon.

Back at the car park the results were soon sorted John taking the win today with just 41¼lbs , Tony was second with 32lbs and Mick’s 31¼lbs gave him third place and the MK Nugget. The sections went to John, Ken, Al and Dave . Next up for the club is The Reservoir at Hartleylands Farm and hopefully a better days fishing for all .

Marsh AC club match.

Well it’s off to Essex for me today for another Marsh AC club match at Colemans Cottage on Wood Lake. That first glance out of the window didn’t look too promising though there was a bit of sun among the clouds but the forecast wasn’t that good for the day ahead . Anyway with the two cats fed and the kit loaded up it was time to go. Through the Dartford Tunnel and down the A12 proved to be straightforward and I arrived around at 7·30am to find Simon just returning from a walk round the lake with his brother Tony who had come along as a guest today .

First things first and it was into the clubhouse for one of Colemans Big Breakfasts a great way to fortify yourself for the day ahead.

Terry and Rod were already tucking into theirs and slowly but surely the rest arrived and the banter started to flow. A few were concerned that the weather may have unsettled the fish making for patchy sport, but I was fairly sure that given the quality of the venue most would have a decent days sport . Chairman Dave had daughter Chrissy along for company today and fishing as a guest, she’s not a bad angler and having had a bit of coaching from Tommy Pickering at Lindholme recently there were a few that were worrying about the possibility of being CHRISSIED today .

By 8·45am it was time for the draw and having dipped my hand in I found peg 12 was to be mine for the match, just a couple away from the one I’d had in the corresponding match last year.

With the gear collected I made my way to my peg, Al was on peg 6 a strongly favoured peg and he would be looking to make it five wins out of five on this years club matches. With just an hour to set up it was make your mind up time as there are so many possibilities on the pegs with the islands running down the centre, The carp in woods run to a good size and the barbel keep growing and fight like hell. I opted for just 3 pole lines. so the rigs would be similar to those I use at Rolfs to take any possible wear and tear. One straight out in front at around 6mtrs where I had around 5 feet of water, one at the end of the bush to my left with around 4 feet of depth and the final one for the right hand margin which had 18 inches of water close in. All the rigs were freshly tied and made up with NG XT Mugger HD’s in sizes 0·3gm and 0·4gm on 0·21 Ultima power match straight through to size 16 Kamasan B911X’s. Bait for today was a mix of 4 and 6mm pellet for feed along with some 6 and 8mm pellets for banding along with some corn and GOT Baits soft hookers .

The All-In was called at 10am and I fed a large pot of mixed pellets with a few grains of corn at 6mtrs, a handful at the end of the bush and another handful down the margin. I banded a 6mm and shipped out to 6mtrs where some bubbles were already coming up and was hopeful of some quick action. Unfortunately it wasn’t to be the wind had picked up a bit and was blowing into me and bringing with it the odd shower (no surprise there then ) but I was just getting little digs and dips on the float and only managed to connect with a couple of small roach that I bumped off . despite swapping through the hook baits I couldn’t tempt a thing and while nobody that I could see had got off to a flyer Tony had taken a couple of carp as had Graham next to me on peg 11.

After half an hour of total frustration I gave it up as a bad job and swapped over to target the end of the bush with a banded 8mm. Still a bit slow but the float finally buried and a lift saw plenty of elastic stream from the top kit as the fish powered off and after a minute the culprit popped up by my nets, a barbel of around 3lbs. Not the expected carp but very welcome none the less to get me off the mark . Jean had also brought me a mug of coffee so things were starting to look up despite the showers. A couple of small carp followed and an F1 before yet another barbel put in an appearance and it was these that kept me ticking over for the next couple of hours.

 I could hear a bit of banter between Kevin and Al that suggested that Al was catching reasonably well on peg 6 but from what I could see Tony opposite on peg 29 had made the best start but nobody seemed to be heading off into the distance, though …….

By about 12·30 I got a shout to bring my mug round to Jean if I wanted another cup off coffee and with sport remaining slow took the opportunity to fill in the bush and margin and take a stroll with my camera .

Terry was still tucked away under his brolly and didn’t look like he was having a particularly good time of it despite having the fun of watching Dave trying his best to get the better of Chrissy on the opposite bank ……

A quick chat with Al revealed that he was struggling though it didn’t look like it to me when he shipped out, gave a couple of taps and he shipped back with an F1 attached that was soon netted ……

Mick was being a bit cagey as to just how well he was doing on peg 2, but it was obvious that he fancied his chances of taking home the Milton Keynes Nugget today . As I got to the car park I stopped to take a picture looking down the lake so that those reading this who aren’t familiar with Colemans can get some idea of Wood Lake……

Carrying on round Chris’s guest Gary Luck on peg 38 was playing a bream and soon had it safely in the net …….

I soon reached Jean and collected a fresh mug of coffee , while Kevin seemed to be relatively happy with the way his match was progressing. Chrissy on peg 32 had just dropped her rig in short of the bush to her left to see if she could tempt something …….

While Dad Dave next up on peg 31 seemed to be targeting silvers fishing maggot down his left hand margin, and although he declared himself confident of being ahead of his daughter at that point, it looked like the actions of a desperate man to me . Tony seemed to be going along steadily with his favourite method, fishing up in the water …….

Keith wasn’t looking to happy with his lot and was struggling to get to grips with peg 25, though he probably had one eye on how fellow GOT Bait angler Vic was doing over on peg 17……

Tony Watkins on peg 22 seemed quite happy taking carp on the method feeder, which was more than could be said for his brother Simon on peg 20 who was really struggling to get a bite from anywhere in his peg ……

Keith Powell was on peg 18 and had just started to have a look down his right hand margin as he’d started to see signs of fish there …….

Vic was trying hard to sort his peg out but reckoned it wasn’t really happening for him today and he would be lucky if he had 30lbs to show for his efforts so far. Ken on peg 14 was fishing his usual relaxed match on the waggler and was into a carp as I passed by ……..

When I returned to my peg Graham was catching from his margin, but he had the advantage of a reed bed there and I could see fish there. I flicked some more feed to the edge of the bush and the margin, but with no sign of fish in my margin targeted the end of the bush first off. The rest seemed to have done the trick as a couple of minutes in the float buried as a carp picked up the bait and after a spirited tussle was soon in the net . It wasn’t fast and furious but I started to pick up regular fish for around an hour. All the while I was feeding the margin and with an hour and a half to go I finally saw a couple of tail patterns there. First put in with a banded 8mm produced a positive bite and another barbel of around 3lbs, but from then on it was carp all the way . A good common had me thinking I was back at Rolfs, giving a really good account of itself and it was obvious why when I finally slid the net under a big common that must have been close to 15lbs which was to be my best fish of the day . This was followed by a stunning Ghostie of around 10lbs and a few smaller fish.
Graham was having trouble connecting with bites and I suggested that he changed to 8mm pellet and let him have some to try and it seemed to do the trick for him in the last hour. I finished with another five carp including another double before Dave blew the whistle for the All-Out at 4pm. Shouts of Fish-On came from Graham and Chrissy and I couldn’t help wondering if Chrissy had done enough to beat her Dad ……

The gear was soon packed away and I was pretty confident I had around a ‘Ton’ in the nets despite having lost track of just what was in them at the end. I soon had my gear back in the car and had a chat with Gerry before following the Weigh-In Round. Mick set a good target with a first weight of exactly 100lbs followed by John with 84½lbs. Next up was Rod with 59½lbs a new PB match weight . Al had a storming end to the match getting decent carp lined up in the margin on paste for 194lbs . Jimmy had 32½lbs and Terry 43½lbs. Graham put 84½lbs on the scales while my fish came to 113lbs . Ken had 80½lbs another PB match weight and Roger 29lbs. Vic had managed 64½lbs.
Keith Powell weighed 83lbs while Simon’s meagre 24lbs left the bragging right firmly with brother Tony who also recorded a new match PB of 70lbs . Keith’s 65½ meant he was waving farewell to the MK Nugget today . Jim’s 53lbs and Martin’s 45lbs brought us round to Tony with an excellent 126lbs . Next up was Chairman Dave with a weight of 67½lbs, but he didn’t look to confident, and rightly so when Chrissy put a new PB match weight of 93lbs on the scales . Sympathy for Dave? ………………. No Chance, it was like a pack of hounds with a 3 legged fox ………… Merciless . Kev was next with 62lbs followed by Zack with 79lbs while Chris was the fifth angler to claim a new PB match weight today with 118lbs . Gary had 28lbs while Ron was last to weigh with 14lbs.

Back to the clubhouse for drinks and sausage rolls while Dave worked out the results. Todays winner was Al (his fifth on the trot) with Tony taking second place and Chris third .
The sections today went to Al, Myself, Keith Powell, Tony and Chris .

Next up for the club is Rockells in two weeks time. Can Al make it six in a row or will someone else get a look in? Time will tell .

Maggotdrowning.com

Alders Farm Match

Like a lot of these things today’s trip to Alders Farm all started when back in early April, Linda (Mermaid) made quite an innocent post on The Maggotdrowning Forum asking whether there would be any interest in a match of some sort at the venue . It was soon obvious there was a bit of interest and before long Linda found herself entering into a new job, that of ‘Match Organiser’ having managed to get a Saturday in June sorted .

I travelled up with Dave the fish today and it was around 8·20am when we arrived at the fishery, First things first and a quick trip to the new on site tackle shop tackle shop for some fishery pellets and a chat with Trevor Price and then getting the nets dipped while Dave dropped our gear at the bottom of the hill. A good few were in attendance and I found Linda to check in, she handed me a name badge, a nice touch so that everyone would know who was who . Next stop was down to to The Pumphouse overlooking the lake to grab a quick breakfast and catch up with some more of todays participants. Much chat over the prospects for the match and the general consensus was that the unsettled weather and rain during the week would keep the weights down today, though everyone should enjoy some good sport .

Around 9am Linda called everyone to the draw. Gary Thorpe had kindly sorted the choice of pegs for the draw, so into the draw bag and peg 5 was attracted to my hand, not a bad peg and I was happy with that . So off to collect my kit and make my way to my peg……

There were a fair few of us pegged on the pumphouse bank with Jonny on peg 1, Lee peg 2. Fellow Jinx Squad members Fred and Clive had pegs 3 and 4 while to my left was Linda’s husband Chris on peg 6. It was nice to see Chris fishing as he tends to be employed as Linda’s ghillie normally . Next up was Rod on peg 7 and Nick on peg 8, while Keith had plenty of space to himself on peg 12.

Settling into the swim the first thing that was noticeable was that yet again the wind was blowing firmly into me, not a bad thing in itself, but it meant that I’d be sitting there all match with a fleece on looking across to those sitting there in polo shirts, or in Andrew on peg 27′s case a very poor taste in football shirt .

Trev had told me that the end of the bush on the right was the sweet spot in the swim, with a back up at 5mtrs straight out so setting up was quite straight forward. Just 3 rigs all pretty much identical as the swim is pretty shallow(around 18 inches at the end of the bush and around 2½ feet at 5mtrs) . These were all Nick Gilbert’s handmade NG Power Pencil’s, two 0·4 gm and a 0·5 gm, all made up on on 0·21 Ultima power match straight through to size 16 Kamasan B911X’s nice and simple and strong enough to stand up to what would hopefully turn into a good bagging session. Bait was simply 2 bags of 6mm fishery pellets, a couple of pints of red maggots and a couple of tins of corn.

With everything set there was a bit of time for a quick chat with Rod, Chris, Clive and Fred before Linda called the All-In at 10·30am. A couple of pots of mixed pellet maggot and corn at 5mtrs and a similar handful fed to the end of the bush but before I can get a bait in the water Clive is playing his first fish of the day …….

I soon had a banded 6mm on the hook and dropped at the end of the bush. The float simply buried and produced a…………..rudd , not the hoped for carp, there’s loads of them in Ash Lake and it’s normally just a case of working through them and keeping the feed going until the carp move in and push them out. After about 5 rudd the next bite produced firm resistance as a carp powered off. Now these carp aren’t huge, indeed the average size is probably around 3lbs, but being that the water is shallow they just power off when you hook them and fight well above their weight . In that respect it’s probably handy that I’m used to fishing Rolfs where the carp are of a far larger average size. It’s just a question of getting their heads up so they take a gulp of air and sliding them over the net .

I felt that Clive had got off to a better start in the first hour as I was only picking up odd fish, but as we moved into the second hour I was starting to catch him up as he had longer gaps between his fish. In fact looking around it was obvious that this was going to be one of those days where you had to work for your fish as nobody seemed to be really bagging up , but I was reasonably confident that if I could keep the fish coming at the same rate a ‘Ton’ was definitely on the cards . My back up line at 5mtrs however was only producing the odd fish so that was written off pretty early on .

Looking on I could see Clive hanging on as increasing amounts of red hydro appeared from the end of his top kit, obviously a decent fish it appeared hell bent on reaching the island, steady pressure finally told though and it was a very relieved Clive that finally netted another fighting fit carp ………

Chris was having a bit of a mare however as the rudd stubbornly refused to make way for carp close in, forcing him to fish long to find any carp, but even then a few to many were slipping the hook as he played them ……

About 2pm Trevor Price had a stroll round taking a few pictures and seeing that I thought I’d better have a quick session with my camera so I had a few pictures for this report . I strolled down to Rod (isis) to find him cursing the rudd, they seemed to have settled into his peg and were doing a great impression of Piranhas devouring anything he cared to put on the hook . Nick (pastie) on peg 8 was starting to get among a few however and looked to be getting one over on his Dad, Steve (rookery54) who was across on peg 16 …….

While over on peg 20 I could see Trev (grannyspodder) who seemed to be waiting far to long between bites today …….

Meanwhile on peg 22 it looked to me like Gary (shooter560) had decided to try paste in an effort to up his catch rate …….

On peg 27 Andrew (lemon1) had at least covered up his rather dubious taste in football tops, while Keith was wishing for an upturn in sport like he’d had on his previous visit here when he’d set a new match best for himself …….

and tucked away on peg 30 was Dave the fish, I’d noticed that he’d been catching as well as anyone on that bank, and with this sort of fishing suiting his style felt he was bound to be in with a shout at the end ……

Back on peg 3 Fred (Milo) was smiling but it hid the frustration of not getting the best from his peg as he was suffering with to many foul hookers and lost fish ……..

While a look across to Lee (red baron) saw him with a smile on his face as he slid another carp over the waiting landing net ……

Steve (big Stump) seemed lost in concentration on peg 38, probably hoping to avoid being beaten by the next peg …….

Which happened to be occupied by the Match Organiser herself, Linda (Mermaid) who was obviously targeting fish in the margins ……

As was Simon (sidev77) who obviously had the same aim as Steve …….

Back at my peg I’d just netted my first fish on my return when what sounded like a rifle shot came from the left , Nick had destroyed a Tri-Cast top kit when a carp had buried itself in the margin reeds. Moving into the last hour I was still taking fish on a steady basis from the edge of the bush in between being heckled by Clive and Chris to the effect that I was bagging and it must be solid with fish in the peg………………. hurtful that neither of them felt that it may be down to my superior piscatorial ability . Anyway despite this harassment I soldiered heroically on till the All-Out was called at 3·30pm. Looking down at my clicker I had 49 carp recorded on it and I felt that I had a comfortable Ton+ in the nets, which I felt was a decent effort given how hard the lake had fished today .

As we packed away our kit and waited for the scales the chat turned to how the day had gone. Rod now understood why Gary Thorpe refers to rudd as ‘Vermin’ having suffered a peg full of them all day and Nick showed off his new multi piece top kit. Clive felt he may have 50-60lbs though I was convinced he had more. The scales were moving around the lake pretty fast so it was obvious that it hadn’t fished as it can today and when they got to Keith (Gandhi), my travelling partner Dave the fish was leading with 117lbs the only ‘Ton’ so far……

Rod followed with 15½lbs and Chris put 40¼lbs on the scales ……

My 3 nets weighed a total of 132lbs 07ozs to take the lead with 4 still to weigh ……

Clive did indeed have a bit more than his estimate with 89lbs to show for his efforts ……

and while Lee was last but one to weigh with 102lbs 06ozs ……

and Jonny was last to weigh in with a fine 123lbs 06ozs .

Back to the Pumphouse for the results where we found that the staff had kindly laid on hot drinks for us, a really nice touch . Linda then called us all to order and paid out the sections…….

Section A:
1st: Peter (Mugger) Morton £20
2nd: Jonathan (jonny_b1989) Broadbent £15

Section B:
1st: Nick (pastie) Allen £20
2nd: Keith (Gandhi) Ashby £15

Section C:
1st: Dave (dave the fish) Collier £20
2nd: Tony (Tony_grig) Grigorjevs £15

Section D:
1st: Simon (sidev77) Watkins £20
2nd: Linda (Mermaid) Billington £15

Third overall on the day went to Dave the fish , Second to Jonny and the winner was Me and I have to say that I was both surprised and delighted when Linda presented me with an engraved tankard as a trophy, a lovely end to the day ……

In conclusion I have to say a Big Thank You to Linda and Chris on behalf of all who attended, spot on organisation, right down to badges so that everyone knew who was who . I think you may have created an annual fixture for the MD’s calender in the future .

Another Big Thank You to Trev, Gary and all the staff at Alders Farm, Top Breakfast, great fishing, even on a hard day, fully deserving of the Stillwater of the Year Award that the fishery won in the National Angling Awards last year .

Finally,Thanks to all the forum members that attended, plenty of good banter along with more than a few laughs as expected on a Drowner’s match and good to meet up and put some faces to names from the forum .

Marsh AC club match.

It’s off to what is a new venue for Marsh AC for todays club match, Puddledock Farm Fishery just outside Brentwood in Essex where we will be fishing The Road Lake on the complex .

Chris was picking me up today and he arrived just after 7am, and with my kit loaded into his van we were off. It wasn’t a long drive and we pulled into the fishery car park at around 7·45am. Climbing out of the van it was immediately noticeable just how windy it was and looking across it was noticeable that one half of the lake was very exposed to this, while the other half was sheltered. Anyway without further ado we made our way over to the on-site Lakeside Café to start the day with a Full English as they had agreed to open up early for us today. I have to say that the food and service was 1st Class , easily rivalling that of any fishery I’ve visited in recent times and one that I’d happily recommend.

Clive unfortunately missed out as he was stuck in traffic on the M25 though he did arrive just in time for the draw and from what I’d seen pegs 1-14 were ones to avoid unless you wanted to battle the wind today, so it will come as no surprise that it was peg 6 that stuck to my hand today, right in the teeth of the prevailing wind . Tony had the shortest walk to peg 1, just as well really as having loaded his trolley wheel into the car he found on arrival that he’d forgotten to load his actual trolley………… not that we weren’t sympathetic to his plight of course .

It wasn’t to far to my peg, but settling into it I really didn’t fancy it today as it promised to be an uncomfortable six hours in an area Dave and Tony had struggled to catch from on a visit a couple of weeks previously, in fact Tony’s advice on the forum had been “take as long as you like for breakfast “. Anyway nothing ventured…….nothing gained.

I was going to keep things simple today Just a couple of rigs for the pole and the method feeder which would be the main line up against the island at 20mtrs. The first of the two pole rigs was a 0·8gm NG XT Gimp on 0·16 Ultima power match straight through to a size 18 Kamasan B911X for straight out at around 5mtrs where I had around 4ft of heavily towing water while the other rig was a 0.3 NG Edger again on 0·16 Ultima power match straight through to a size 18 Kamasan B911X for the margin line that had around 2 feet of depth. Bait was simply 4mm coarse pellet for feed (dampened down for the method feeder) and 6mm and 8mm’s for the hook along with some sweetcorn and 6mm GOT Rippers as alternative hookers.

Somewhere in the course of the morning I’d misplaced my glasses so had wandered back to the café to see if I’d left them there. I hadn’t, but luckily spotted them on the floor by Chris’s van still in one piece, but this meant that I only just made it back to my peg before the All-In was called at 10·15am . I potted in a mixed pot of pellet and corn at 5mtrs and the margins and followed that out with a banded 6mm at 5mtrs. It was immediately apparent just how strongly the wind was gusting, making presentation even at that distance difficult especially coupled with the tow .

Tony appeared to get off the mark with what looked like a Goldfish after around 30 minutes and a little while later Kevin had taken a Tench. An hour in for me and I hadn’t managed as much as a bite. I’d tried on several occasions to ping a few 8mm pellets over to the island to prime it for the method, but the wind had blown them back every time. Anyway with no action on either of the pole lines it was time to have a look across with the method feeder, a 6mm pellet was banded and pressed into the dampened 4mm’s and cast across tight to the island.

Not a knock, tap or liner followed, it wasn’t looking good, just a question of keep recasting in an attempt to get some feed across there and hopefully draw some fish at some point. Finally after around 45 minutes of this the tip flew round and after a bit of spirited resistance a common of around 2lbs was safely in the net to get me off the mark . However it took another 30 minutes before this was repeated again with a similar result. Another 45 minutes passed after this with nothing to show for it when I decided to take a walk and see how others were doing.

Jim was struggling with just a few small roach taken on maggot from his margin, but Keith was just sliding a decent carp into the net as I approached is peg. The wind was making it awkward for him but he was just sitting it out on a line at around 6mtrs and picking up what he claimed to be the odd fish ……

Next up was Chris who’d taken a few early fish fishing a 4AAA waggler across to the island though those fish had drifted away and he was now back to fishing the pole. Martin and Graham were both struggling with the wind and going nowhere fast and Mick (or was it Petal? ) was searching his margin and already fearing the Milton Keynes Nugget would be heading home with Keith today ……

Round to Clive and the change was amazing , just a gentle breeze from behind as the swims were relatively sheltered by some trees. He reported that he’d had a decent start before it faded. I’m not sure that I believed him though as his float promptly buried resulting in a carp that he swiftly netted before I strolled off ……

Terry was fishing the feeder across, but for some reason couldn’t get bite on it , a situation that was even more annoying for Terry as Al was having success a couple of pegs away ……

Indeed Al seemed to be fishing a completely different match from most sitting there in a tee shirt and shorts , regularly taking fish on the method feeder fished across to the island ……

Dave had departed for a spot of lunch at the café along with Kevin and Jean, while Eddy was suffering along with a lot of us on what was his first club outing of the year. Rod was having an enjoyable day fishing a feeder half way across what looked like a Mill Pond and was just about to net his eighth carp of the day ……

Tony had added a few silvers from his margin swim as had Ken who was having a similar battle to me with the wind.

I wish I could say that the second half of the match was an improvement, but it wasn’t it remained just as dire for me with just another 3 bites on the method feeder producing another 3 carp of a similar size to the first two and to be honest it was a blessed relief when the All-Out was called at 4·15pm . I soon had my kit packed away and back to the car park and all that remained was the Weigh-In.

Tony kicked things off with 20¼lbs while Kevin solitary Tench made 2¾lbs and Ken’s silvers 6¼lbs. My 5 carp came to 11½lbs and Jim’s roach and skimmers 7¼lbs. Keith’s claimed 4 fish morphed into a few more and stopped the scales at 40½lbs. Chris put 24½lbs on the scales and Martin and Graham managed to tie on 7½lbs each. Mick waved farewell to the MK Nugget with just 12lbs while Clive’s fish came to a level 25lbs. Terry was muttering about taking up Golf as his catch came to just 3¾lbs . Al had romped it for the 4th match on the trot with a fine 94¼lbs (I think it’s time he was banned from using a method feeder ) Dave had 37½lbs despite stopping for lunch while Eddie recorded 8½lbs and Rod finished off with 16¼lbs.

Back to the car park for the results and of course Al took the win , Keith was second and Dave third . The section money went to Tony, Keith, Clive and Al.

Thoughts on the day? Puddledock Farm is certainly a nice venue with good facilities, we caught it on a bad day when the weather didn’t allow it to do itself justice, so on balance it’s got to be worth another visit in my opinion .

Marsh AC club match.

It’s off down to Hartleylands Fishery at Cranbrook in Kent for what should have been an Inter-club match against Morefax AC but unfortunately they haven’t been able to get a team together so it’s just a regular club match today. However as we booked the whole of Nick’s Lake we’ve invited a few guests along so hopefully everyone will have a decent day . A glance out of the window offered a glimpse of what promised to be a decent day weather wise, so after taking care of the cats and swigging a couple of cups of coffee the kit was loaded into the car and off I went .

First stop was the Knoxbridge Café to take care of breakfast Mick the Chippy and grand daughter Rosie had just arrived as I pulled up and we entered to find that Keith and Mick already there and waiting for breakfast after their trip down from Milton Keynes. John. Martin and Zack weren’t far behind and once breakfast was taken care of we made our way down to the fishery for the draw.

The usual banter was flying around as we waited . Lee was there, the sole Morefax angler who could make it, so he would be fishing as a guest along with along with Gary who was Chris’s guest today and fishing his first match for about 30 years . There were two areas I wanted to draw today, either the spit (pegs 7-9) or the mid twenties. Into the bag and the drawing hand didn’t co-operate leaving me with peg 16, not where I really wanted to be .

Making my way round to the peg with my gear I found that Rod had peg 13 and Al was on peg 14, while Martin had 17 and Jim 18. You can see where everyone else was pegged on the peg plan below ……

Settling into my peg it was a question of sorting out a plan of attack. The obvious approach was method feeder to the island, but it only ever seems to produce small carp of around a pound and if I’m honest it’s a style of fishing that bores me to tears, so today I was going to target the bigger fish that tend to lurk around the margins so I set up four top kits. Two had Nick Gilbert’s handmade NG Power Pencil’s, 0·4 g made up on on 0·18 Ultima power match straight through to size 16 Kamasan B911X’s for a line in front at 6mtrs where I had around 4 feet of water, while the other 2 were 0.2g NG Edger’s again on 0·18 Ultima power match straight through to size 16 Kamasan B911X’s for the margins where I had around 2½ft of water. I also set up a pellet waggler should I see fish moving around up in the water. Bait was my usual combination of 6mm coarse pellet for feed and the hook along with some 8mm’s, sweetcorn and 6mm GOT Rippers as alternative hookers.

With around 15 minutes to the All-In I took a little stroll. Al had set up to fish long and shallow on the pole along with a method feeder and pellet waggler ……

and I found Lee down on peg 7 with a big grin on his face and itching to get started ……

So at 10am Dave called the All-In, a pot of pellet onto the 6mtr line and a handful down both margins was followed by a banded 8mm out to the 6mtr line, Sport was far from instant though and a good 10 minutes passed before I had my first bite which I promptly missed . Al had gone straight out on the method and was soon into a run of small carp, but apart from him sport seemed to be pretty slow up our end of the lake. My second bite produced a feisty little mirror of around 1½lbs so at least I was off the mark, but my next couple of fish were small skimmers and the first hour saw me add just another 3 small carp to my nets. The second hour was a little better, but only just with another 6 small carp to show for my efforts, but at least the sun was shining allowing me to ditch the fleece and sit comfortably in a polo shirt for the first time this year . However I was getting nowhere fast, while Al was still catching on the method, although he was complaining that fish were knocking off the groudbait as soon as the method hit the water, so I decided it may be time to get the feeder rod out. However I rigged it with a small cage feeder as opposed to the method, and was going to feed dampened 6mm’s in an attempt to stop it getting ragged. So with a couple of pints of pellets damped down I took a stroll while the pellets soaked.

Simon had started on the feeder, but it hadn’t really produced for him so he had reverted to the pole in attempt to find some action ……

Next up was Keith, another who’d started on the feeder but reverted to the pole and while he insisted that he wasn’t really getting to grips with it he was soon into a carp as we chatted ……

Clive was looking a little happier with things today fishing the bush to his right and soon had plenty of elastic streaming out of his top kit, and the culprit a carp that he’d foul hooked in the tail soon found its way to his waiting net ……

Next up was Tony, back with us today having missed the Rayne Lodge match, he was targeting his left hand margin and seemed to be reasonably pleased with his progress , while down on peg 26 Rosie was having a fine old day in fact she was having such a good time that Grandad Mick had stopped fishing himself and contented himself with being Rosie’s Ghillie for the day ……

Round to peg 31 and Mick W was being his usual laid back self and although he was being a bit cagey about how he was doing the large tail pattern by his float when he dropped his rig in rather gave the game away that he was probably sitting on a good few fish ……

On the next peg Chairman Dave reckoned he was having a similar day to me (I won’t call it a Grueller as I know one of my readers would take issue with me on this ) but having returned from a stroll of his own had managed a couple of quick fish on paste down the margin ……

It was pretty much the same story until I got round to the point where I found Lee targeting his margin and getting among a few carp to keep him happy with his progress …….

Kevin was happily fishing the feeder on peg 8 and having one of his best days of the year so far ……

Terry was also having a decent day on peg 9 although he’s lost a couple of lumps during the morning that just didn’t want to play ball and as I made my way back to my peg Al was giving the method a rest, and seeing if he could find some action on the pole line ……

Back at my peg, and with the feeder loaded and a banded 8mm on the hook it was out to the island. Within 30 seconds the tip wrapped round and a regulation 1lb carp was heading to the net, this rapidly became eight in eight casts forcing Martin to get his feeder rod into the action. For the next couple of hours fish came regularly and with around an hour to go I had 50 carp in the nets. The trouble was they were like peas in a pod, all around the 1lb mark and I wasn’t enjoying it so with an hour to go the feeder rod was up the bank and I spent that final hour looking for some lumps in the margins. However it wasn’t to be, they just weren’t there and I only added another half a dozen small carp to the nets before Dave called the All-Out at 4pm.

Packing my gear away I felt that I had something approaching 60lbs to show for my efforts. I would almost certainly have topped the ‘Ton’ if I’d fished the feeder all match, but I wouldn’t have enjoyed it as I like to have something larger to target nowadays. I was pretty sure that Al had won the match though as it had suited his style of fishing as he just likes to be busy and doesn’t mind what he’s catching as long as he keeps busy, and he’d certainly been that today .

When I caught up with the weigh-in they had just weighed Lee in with 105¾lbs and judging by his smile he was happy with that . Kevin had 63lbs and Terry 73½lbs. Rod had 11½lbs while Al certainly had been busy recording a fine 176½lbs . Next up my estimate proved to be almost spot on with 59¾lbs. Martin managed just 13½lbs and Jim 38lbs. Simon had tipped back as he’d had to leave early. Keith had managed 85½lbs but Clive topped that with 113lbs while Tony put 106½lbs on the scales . Mick was a very proud Grandad when Rosie weighed in with a fine 77lbs, “its just like catching roach on the canal Grandad, but bigger “. Mick W bagged ‘The Milton Keynes Nugget‘ today with 113lbs but did himself no favours beating Chairman Dave’s 51¾lbs from the next peg . Graham managed a level 40lbs to Zack’s 23½lbs and John rounded things off with 39¼lbs.

So back to the car park for the results and Al had taken the win today , while Clive and Mick W had tied for second . The sections today were won by Al, Lee, Clive and Mick W. Overall just over 1250lbs of fish were weighed in, making an average of just over 66lbs per angler. Not a bad day I think you’ll agree .

Marsh AC club match.

The Top Lake at Rayne Lodge just outside of Braintree in Essex is yet again the venue for the second Marsh AC club match of the year. However we normally visit the venue in late may once things have started to warm up a bit. The view through the bedroom window today promised a decent start to the day ahead, but the forecast was for heavy showers after midday . I soon had the cats fed, while cereal and coffee fuelled me to load up the car and set off. A good traffic free run saw me arriving in the car park just after 7·30am along with Kevin & Jean. Soon the others started to arrive and with just 14 of us fishing today things were soon underway. Dave asked Keith and I to sort out the pegs to use today so we set off round the lake while others ferried their gear down the hill and Dave collected the monies. Virtually every peg looked good for a few fish and Keith and I made the picks trying to give most anglers a bit of room and our 14 choices went into the hat ready for the draw .

Into the hat and it’s peg 14A for me, the 2nd time in the last 3 visits (the other one was peg 14) I never seem to be able to get out of this corner of the lake when we visit, but it’s normally good for a few fish .

Knowing the area so well it didn’t take long to get set up, just 3 top kits with black hydro. It can tow a bit in this corner if the wind gets into it so I set up a couple of rigs to fish at 6mtrs where there’s around 3 feet of water, the first was an 0·4 NG XT Gimp on 0·14 Ultima power match straight through to a size 16 Kamasan B911X while the second was a, 0·3 NG XT Power Pencil Mk 2 again on 0·14 Ultima power match straight through to a size 16 Kamasan B911X which was a little more delicate and would see use if it wasn’t towing. The third rig was my customary 0.2 NG Edger again on 0·14 Ultima power match straight through to a size 16 Kamasan B911X for the margin lines that had around 2 feet of depth. Bait was simply 6mm coarse pellet for feed and the hook along with some sweetcorn and 6mm GOT Rippers as alternative hookers.

There was still a good 30 minutes to go so I took a stroll to see how others were going to tackle things. Al and Dave were already exchanging banter on the prospects for the day that lay ahead . Kev was settling into peg 1 which I’d fancied for a few fish when Keith and I selected it earlier. Jean kindly provided a freshly cooked sausage and bacon roll and a mug of coffee to wash it down . Chris had set up for a catch anything with fins approach. Most seemed to be going with the pole, though Martin next to me on peg 14 was going for the feeder to the island in front .

10am and the whistle sounded for the All-In. A cup of pellets with a few grains of corn was fed at 6mtrs along with a handful of pellet into the left hand margin before I shipped out with a banded 6mm pellet, Dave over on peg 21 had got off to a flyer with 6 fish in his first 6 put in’s!!!!!!!!! and I had seen Al netting a couple of quick fish as well.
A few more pellets flicked over my rig and a couple of lift and drops soon saw the float slide away and a spirited fight from a small common followed before I netted it to get myself off the mark . The first hour was nice and steady, keeping a little bit of feed going in and working the rig kept the bites coming and a few small carp and skimmers coming to the net.

Word was filtering down that Dave was already in the pound seats as he’d found the fish in the margins and feeding from the off, while Al had reverted to the method to the point of the island in an attempt to keep up with him as he couldn’t buy a bite from his margin . I could hear the two of them talking and tales of 3-4lbs fish, which meant I was going to need some more and larger fish than I’d already got, especially when my next fish was this mint little common ……

I took an early look down my margins but to no avail so it was back to 6mtrs to keep working it, occasionally adding another section to see if anything had backed off the feed, but they didn’t seem to be there in any numbers. I would take 2 or 3 fish and then have to wait 10-15 minutes for a bite. This seems to be the pattern in this part of the lake since 2009 when all the overhanging trees that provided cover were cut down and it now seems that fish just move through the area and you almost have to ambush them as they pass through as they seem reluctant to settle for any length of time.

Mick over on peg 16 was putting a few together but having to work for them, though this was disturbed when a passing duck snaffled his bait as he was laying his rig in. Thankfully Mick managed to get the duck to the bankside where he finally managed to unhook it after some deft work with a disgorger, the duck swimming off with just a few feathers and its dignity ruffled . Martin was having a hard time of it, latching into various snags round the island and then seeing his reel handle fly off and land in the lake. Undaunted he soon changed reels and was back in action ……

For me it was just a question of plugging away and keeping a few fish going into the net as apart from Dave and Al nobody else seemed to be getting among the fish from what I could see or hear. I kept having the odd look down the margins but they steadfastly refused to produce as much as a bite, and after a blank spell of nearly 20 minutes at 6mtrs I re-fed it pretty heavily and set of for my customary stroll with the camera . John was struggling next door to Martin and it looked like the two travelling companions would be battling to the end of the match for the bragging rights today …….

Clive was settled into peg 11A and having a look down his left hand margin, having struggled to catch from the right hand side of his peg ……

Keith was on peg 10 and working hard to put a few together and beat Mick in another battle of the travelling companions, though I did manage to bring a smile to his face when I related the tale of Mick’s encounter with the duck …..

Simon and Graham had similar tales of struggle, though Graham’s did ring a little hollow as he lifted into a fish as I passed by ……

Ken seemed quite content with his lot tucked away in a corner on peg 5 and was happily putting a few together today ……

Chris on peg 3 was also putting a mixed bag together with his approach, but felt that he could be doing better …….

Kev on peg 1 was having a mare in all honesty, not only was he struggling for bites from his swim, he also had the perfect view of Dave and Al apparently bagging up just across from him ……

Dave had vanished for a stroll by the time I got round there, but I probably shouldn’t have asked Al what the crack was, as it wasn’t a pretty site ……

Back at my peg it was just a question of head down and get on with it, nick a couple of fish then wait a while before getting another couple. At least they were getting a little larger as time wore on with a few 2-3 pounders mixed in among the smaller ones . After yet another blank spell I took another look down the margins with 45 minutes to go and the float buried by a feisty little mirror that was soon in the net and thankfully this continued right up to the whistle sounded the All-Out at 4pm .

Packing away my kit I couldn’t help wondering what the outcome would have been had they turned up earlier in the margins? I was sure that Dave and Al were way out in front but reckoned that my late run of fish should see me with around 70lbs of fish to put on the scales.

The Weigh-In started with Kev on peg 1 who only managed a meagre 12lbs . Chris recorded 38½lbs while Ken was happy to see his fish weigh 53lbs , Graham’s 42¼lbs was followed by Simon’s 36½lbs and Keith chipped in with 39½lbs. Clive had a smile on his face due to his 56½lbs while Martin and John both recorded a level 16lbs to share the bragging rights in the car. My fish came to 77lbs leaving me happy with what I’d got from my peg . Mick’s 36½lbs meant that Keith had the bragging rights for their trip home and Terry could only muster 26½lbs for his days efforts. that just left Al who was admitting to 70lbs (meaning he probably had a Ton+ ) and Dave who was owning up to 80lbs and he’s normally pretty close with his estimates. Al in fact put 106lbs on the scales and Dave 87½lbs .

So back up Heart Attack Hill to the car park where Dave sorted out the days results and the monies. The Winner today was Al with Dave taking 2nd and third place for me . The sections went to Ken, myself and Al .

Next up for Marsh AC is an Inter-club match at Hartleylands Farm against Morefax AC , but before that I’m off on my first trip of the year to Rolf’s Lake next Friday for a 2 day Special Jinx Match.

Al’s Match.

Marsh AC club mate and fellow Maggotdrowner Al Loader had booked the Match Lake at Hawkhurst for a knock up today and with a good few booked on for it everyone was hopeful of a good days sport . Unfortunately the view from the bedroom window was a bit bleak when I looked out, dull grey and overcast with rain falling, but with the cats fed and a couple of cups of coffee to fortify me I soon had my waterproofs on and the car loaded up and headed for Hawkhurst. Thankfully the rain soon stopped, but with the temperature showing just 6°C and some fog outside Tonbridge it looked like a none to glorious spring day ahead .

I pulled into the car park just before 8am to find most already assembled and the last couple followed me in. A cool North easterly wind was noticeable as Keith collected the match fees for Al, before we headed to the fishery Restaurant for breakfast before the draw. The breakfast served at Hawkhurst is one of the best (2 sausage, 2 bacon, 2 eggs, mushrooms, beans/tomatoes, fried slice + toast and tea or coffee) which sets you up nicely for the day ahead, and as we chatted over this, Mick the Chippy was adamant that the Golden Nugget would be returning to him today .

With breakfast taken care of it was back to the car park for the draw. With 16 anglers present all 20 pegs were in and when my turn came peg 3 was mine for the day. Collecting my kit I chatted to Mick McMillan who was happy to have drawn peg 5 , though he wasn’t quite so happy when he found out that I’d drawn peg 6 for Al .
A short walk to my peg revealed Tony on peg 1 while Brodie was on peg 2 and Dave Hough to my right on peg 4. Happiest angler on the day should have been Derek Lockwood on the other bank as he had one empty peg to his right and three to his left. You can see where everyone else drew on the peg plan below ……..

My set up for Hawkhurst was pretty simple. 3 top kits loaded with black hydro and the first 2 rigs were identical, made up of a 0·3 NG XT Power Pencil Mk 2 on 0·14 Ultima power match straight through to a size 16 Kamasan B911X for a 5mtr line (top 2 + 2 sections) on the deck where I had around 4ft of water, while the third was a 0.2 NG Edger again on 0·14 Ultima power match straight through to a size 16 Kamasan B911X for a margin line against the boards. Bait for the day was going to be hard 6mm fishery pellet along with some 6mm GOT Rippers .

With the match being fished from 10·15am till 4·15pm I had a bit of time before the start to have a stroll round and have a chat prior to the All-In so I strolled along the top of the banking behind the pegs to get a better view. Mick McMillan and Al were settled into pegs 5 and 6, a couple of the favoured pegs and would be hard to beat today as they’re both more than capable of doing a big weight ……

On peg 7 Mick was hoping that the power of Beechams powders would hold his cold at bay in his quest to gain back his Golden Nugget and Clive obviously had a cunning plan that was focused on the contents of a tin ……

I had a quick chat with Keith who wouldn’t be able to keep an eye on Mick today, while Terry was having a chat with Paul on peg 10, picking his brains as Paul has a very good record fishing here ……

John seemed happy enough on peg 12, as he had Dave for company today on peg 11 and the 3 empty pegs to his right ……

Derek was in splendid isolation on peg 16, Rod was going with the waggler from peg 19 and Mick Wright was tucked into the corner on peg 20 and hoping to get the bragging rights for the trip home to Milton Keynes with travelling companion Keith today, while over in the opposite corner Tony seemed lost in contemplation of the day ahead ……

10·15am and the whistle was blown signalling the start of the match. Before I could even pot in a cup of pellet Mick was netting his first fish of the day!!!!!! and was netting a second before I shipped out a rig with a 6mm banded pellet on the hook . The hoped for instant bite didn’t materialise for me and others were already into fish before a bit of lift and dropping of the rig was rewarded with the float jagging under. A quick lift resulted in a pleasing resistance and a small common of around 1lb was soon in the net to get me off the mark . That set the tone for me, a pinch of pellet every put in and keep working the rig produced the bites and kept the small carp coming and I ended the first hour with 14 fish in the nets. That north east wind was really chilling despite the sunshine, but kept a decent ripple on the swim.

In the second hour the wind dropped a couple of times but it was noticeable that without the ripple the bites dried up, only returning with the wind. This was especially noticeable as Terry opposite me had the wind off his back leaving his peg a lot calmer, which resulted in him really struggling for a bite ……

Despite the lulls in sport when the wind dropped I managed to maintain my catch rate and at the end of the second hour I’d added another 17 fish to the nets, and felt that I was holding my own with Tony and Brodie, though Dave to my right seemed to be catching at a slightly faster rate ……

Steady away was the story of the third hour for me though Brodie felt that he needed to try a different approach to maintain his catch rate and switched to fishing shallow in an effort to keep them coming ……

Derek over on peg 16 was getting his head down, catching regularly and was obviously profiting from having those empty pegs around him ……

…… as well as being able to keep an eye on Mick and Al who, according to the grapevine were neck and neck and both catching well, though Al did have to take a break to go and get some more pellet as he had run out.

Strangely though I hadn’t seen Dave having his customary stroll during the match and looking up toward his peg I could see him hunched over and concentrating on his right hand margin, so he was obviously catching well …….

into the 4th hour I had 50 fish on my clicker when a bit of a disaster struck. As I netted another carp which thrashed around and broke the line on the rig , and despite going straight back out with a second identical rig I couldn’t buy a bite, no apparent reason for it, but I decided to take a couple of minutes to retie the original rig and once I’d done that had a bite first put in with it.

Mick was still plundering his right hand margin over on peg 20, but the fish that he was getting seemed to be quite small ……

However it was soon apparent that all was not well as sport seemed to slow down for most around the lake, The margins beside the boards were devoid of fish for me and I couldn’t get a bite when I tried there indeed in that 5th hour I only managed to put 8 fish in the net.

The final hour was no better for me either, and in all honesty I was quite relieved when the whistle sounded the All-Out leaving me with 65 fish to weigh-in.

I soon had my kit packed away and back to the car and chatting to others they had all seemed to suffer a poor last couple of hours.

First to weigh-in was Paul on peg 10 putting 97¾lbs on the scales. Keith and Clive had 66½lbs and 71½ respectively while Mick the chippy’s cold had finally caught up with him as he weighed 31½lbs . Al placed a fine 139lbs on the scales but it would only be good enough for second today as Mick McMillan topped that with 148½lbs to take the win on the day . next up Dave Hough’s 123½lbs would give him 3rd . I weighed 105lbs, Brodie 87½lbs and Tony 81lbs. Round to the opposite bank and Mick secured the bragging rights over Keith with a level 98lbs. Rod recorded 23lbs and Terry 34½lbs. Derek recorded a fine 114½lbs to finish just out of the frame. John put 91½lbs on the scales and Dave was last to weigh with a decent 104½lbs.

So Thanks to Al for organising the day , just over 1400lbs of fish put on the scales averaging over 80lbs per man can’t be a bad days fishing on a cold spring day, and Thanks to Mick the Chippy for another Golden Nugget .

 Marsh AC club match.

Well today would see me fishing the first Marsh AC match of the season down at Monk Lakes on Match Lake 4 . Having not fished since the last club match in the middle of October I was really looking forward to this, getting back on the bank and blowing a few cobwebs away. I was soon back into the old routine, up early, get the cats fed and a couple of cups of coffee for myself before loading up the car and setting off for the venue.
It was a dull grey overcast morning as I drove down toward Staplehurst with the temperature showing just 8°C . I’d like to say that it was an uneventful trip, but a bit of debris falling from a truck I was following shot under the car, with a bang signalling that it had hit something!!!!! The centre box of the exhaust as it happens, which will now need fixing . Anyway I made it to the fishery with Rod and Clive arriving behind me. Getting out of the cars Clive looked around and uttered the immortal words “Well at least it isn’t windy”….he really should have known better .

Over to the food bar for a breakfast roll and a cuppa where a healthy turn out of club members was assembling along with Mick the Chippy who was my guest for the day .
The draw took a little longer than usual as Dave had club fees to collect, but the draw was soon underway and I found peg 154 was mine while Mick drew 155 meaning we would have a good old chat today if nothing else.

Into the cars and up to the lake, I soon had my gear at my peg as I was able to park within 20 yards of it. I can’t say I was delighted with it as pegs 154-160 are generally regarded as “The Corner of Death” and not the most favoured to say the least, but hopefully we would still get a few .

As we started to set up the wind got up, a nasty chill north easterly from my right blowing down into the corner, making it feel cooler still . Having not fished for a while it took a bit longer than usual to get set up, even though I was going to keep it pretty simple today. Just 2 top kits loaded with black hydro and a couple of rigs the first was an 0·4 NG XT Gimp on 0·14 Ultima power match straight through to a size 16 Kamasan B911X to fish on the deck at around 10mtrs, while the second was a, 0·3 NG XT Power Pencil Mk 2 again on 0·14 Ultima power match straight through to a size 16 Kamasan B911X for a 4mtr line on the deck. Both lines had a similar 4ft of depth. Bait for the day was going to be a mix of maggot and hard 6mm pellet along with some 6mm GOT Rippers .

Mick meanwhile had the site of a couple of randy swans on his pole line that decided it was the perfect time and spot to make cygnets !!!!!!!!!!!!! Thankfully they soon departed though.
Kev also appeared with a welcome cup of coffee from Jean . Dave signalled the All-In at 10am and I fed a mixed pot of maggot and pellet at 10mtrs, before starting with double red maggot over it, while Mick started on the method just short of the island. Mick was soon off the mark with a gudgeon which led to a discussion of the merits of the humble gobio and soon followed it with a small carp and another gudgeon before my float dipped and I bumped a bottle top off. However it was soon followed by another, all of 2 inches long, but at least I landed it saving myself the dreaded DNW .

I could already hear splashing from up on peg 151 though where Al was able to fish across to the side of the island in relative comfort and seemed to be catching carp already.
Mick was ticking along till he got broken by an unseen denizen of the deep, but I was starting to worry about the destination of the Golden Nugget that was riding on our head to head. Maggot appeared to just attract tiny skimmers and roach so a pot of 6mm’s was followed by the rig with a 6mm ripper on the hook. a bit of lifting and dropping resulted in a positive bite and finally a carp was on it’s way to the net, a nice plump little mirror of around 1½lbs .

It was still hard graft for me, though Mick kept slipping one or two into the net. By 12o’clock I just had 6 carp and that solitary tiny skimmer to show for my efforts so I fed 3 handfuls of pellet onto the 4mtr line and decided to take a stroll with the camera .

Rod and Ken on the other bank of the Corner of Death were having an ever worse time of it than Mick and I as they had the North Easterly blowing full into their faces ……

Graham at least was sheltered by the island, but was still having a struggle to find some fish and had an early look down his margin with some paste to try and snare a carp or two ……

Vic’s peg looked lovely but he was having to work hard for fish that really didn’t want to play ball ……..

Kev was also struggling despite encouragement from Jean (at least I think that was what it was ) I found Tony fishing his right hand margin as his main swim appeared to have died on him, and was lucky enough to get him to pose for a photo with his next fish ……..

Simon was struggling as well despite using his new Maver Elite Carp for the first time and I managed to talk him into letting me have a go with it. A nice pole, but not for me as the balance didn’t feel quite right I’m afraid even after I got Simon to fit the 13mtr extension the right way round .

Round to Keith who complained he was being battered by Mick on the next peg, but he was soon into a fish, but as I raised the camera for an action shot the hook gave way. The curse of the camera? who knows but I felt it best to depart before copping a top two round the ear-hole .

Chris was whittling a few out on his first session since recovering from his broken arm, while Dave had gone for a stroll. Looking back though I could see that Keith and Mick were having a good old ding-dong with the two of them both playing fish ……

Clive seemed utterly miserable as he found fishing at 16mtrs to reach the island to much in the wind that was buffeting him and had resorted to the feeder but with little joy . It didn’t help that he had to watch Al on the next peg catching well from the side of the island as it sheltered him from the wind, and it was pretty obvious already that he would be the one to beat today ……

As I returned to my peg Jean arrived with a welcome cuppa and a cheeseburger from the food bar, so that was consumed before I got back to the business in hand.
Time to attack the 4mtr line and see if I could make something happen. Feed a small handful of 6mm’s and swing a banded 6mm out to the same spot. A couple of lift and drops and the job’s a good un as the float buried resulting in a nice little Mirror . It was never hectic but by sticking at it I soon had small carp and F1′s coming regularly to the net, forcing Mick into trying a similar approach in an effort to avoid the loss of a Golden Nugget.

Fortunately for me, I managed to keep them coming at a greater rate than Mick and when Dave called the All-Out at 4pm we both knew the destination of the Nugget.

With the kit back in the cars the Weigh-In started at Mick’s peg with a hard earned 39½lbs while my net came to a level 63lbs . John chipped in with 23½lbs. Al had made the most of his island peg with a fine 113½lbs . Clive had suffered with just 29lbs and Martin had fared even worse with 17¾lbs . Dave and Chris had had 84lbs and 53lbs and Jim 27½lbs. Mick’s 83lbs left him short of Keith’s 97½lbs. Zack added 23lbs to the total and Simon could only muster 20lbs while Terry was rewarded with 46lbs. Tony put 61½lbs on the scales, while Jean’s coaching had resulted in 37lbs for Kev. Vic’s hard work produced 70¼lbs for him while Graham could only muster 20½lbs. Rod and Ken finished things off with 9½lbs and 18¾lbs respectively.

Back to the car park for the results, with Al taking the win . Keith second and Dave 3rd  .   Al, Dave, Keith and Vic taking the sections on the day and Mick’s Golden Nugget found a new home in my pocket .

Next up for me is Al’s Knock Up at Hawkhurst on the 14th so keep your eyes out for that report .

Marsh AC
Alders Farm Fishery

Well today sees me and some other members of Marsh AC visiting Alders Farm Fishery just outside the village of Great Brickhill. It’s really nothing more than a friendly mid-week knock up that’s been arranged by club member Keith Ashby who lives reasonably close to the fishery. It’s a venue that’s capable of throwing up some mega match weights, so it will be interesting to see how we get on fishing the Match Lake today .

However that means an early start for me today to avoid as much weekday traffic as I can, so I’m up at silly O’clock and have the car loaded and ready to go in time to drop Maria off at work at 6am, then it’s a case of driving straight through Central London to get onto the M1, then onto the A5 to get to Alders Farm. This saw me pulling into the car park just before 9am along with Al and Keith P . We soon had our kit unloaded and with our nets dipped and feed pellet purchased from Gary who pointed us in the right direction and we made our way down to the pump house where Gwen had kindly opened up so we could get a pre match bacon sarnie and a cuppa that was much appreciated . Joining us today were Trev and Bert from GOT Baits along with Mick and John B who work with Keith. Standing outside on the patio you could see plenty of carp cruising around Peg 1 and a couple of crusts were eagerly devoured by them. Trev as usual was a mine of information for those that hadn’t fished the venue before . Unfortunately Simon phoned to say he’d had been delayed, so at 9·30am we went ahead with the draw and peg 1 was the one that ended up in my hand. Nice short walk then .

Marsh AC club match.

It’s Rockells Farm that is the venue for the latest Marsh AC match today. It normally throws up some phenomenal weights so hopes will be high for a good days fishing today among the club members . I’d arranged to meet at Dave’s house and follow him to the venue, so with the cats fed and the car loaded I made my way over there arriving around 6·45am. Chris was strolling down the road, he was tagging along today as a spectator, his broken arm preventing him from fishing. Dave appeared and we were off and we made good time arriving at Rockells around 8am .

A few of the lads set off to peg out as the pegs aren’t numbered and I soon had the kit loaded on the trolley, and that’s where it all started to go pear shaped. There’s a bit of a slope up from the car park to the lake, and halfway up the slope I felt a searing pain in my left calf that brought me to a halt! A couple of the lads came to my aid, but I was left hobbling around and feeling pretty uncomfortable, not the best of starts to my day .

Anyway Peg 13 came my way in the draw, a number that seems to follow me, and I hobbled off with my kit to set up for the day ahead. John had Peg 10 with Jim for company on Peg 11, while Peg 12 was empty. I arrived to find that I had Simon for company on Peg 14 today, Terry was through the gap on Peg 15 ( where Dave had 344lbs last year) Vic was on 16 with Clive on Peg 17 (my peg last year).

I have to say that my initial impression was that the swim looked spot on with an overhanging willow to the right and another to the left , but with my box set up I got a bit of a shock as I put my nets in, finding that the water barely covered them, and a closer look confirmed that the water level was at least a foot down, if not a bit more on the normal level when I’ve fished there previously ! It’s not deep at the best of times and as I sorted out the rigs for the day ahead it became apparent just how little water I had in front of me.

 

I ended up with 3 rigs, all pretty much identical, being 0.2 NG Edger’s on 0·20 Ultima Power Match finished off with size 16 Guru MWG’s, plus a 0·2 NG Margin paste on 0·20 Ultima Power Match finished off with size 12 Guru MWG that was set up on my margin pole, these were set between 6 and 18 inches deep as that was all the depth I could find regardless of where I plumbed up. Bait today was 8mm pellet and paste with 6mm pellet for feed. but I also had some 6mm floating pellet as these have proved deadly in the past for sorting out the better fish .

On previous visits I’ve caught well on a top 2 tight in to the margins, but that line was dry today, so I would be looking to fish a line at the end of my nets and across to the overhanging trees. With a bit of time before the off I had a hobble along to see how the others were. Pretty much in the same boat, but someone had been doing some gardening removing a lot of cover, most notably in Clive’s swim where an overhanging bush had completely vanished and he was struggling to find any depth of water . Vic’s platform was way off the water, but at least he’d managed to get set up in front of it at water level, but again all the bank side vegetation had been cut back. Thankfully Kevin had brought a cup of coffee round and I sat down to drink that as I contemplated the two 3 hour sessions ahead .

So at 10am Dave called the All-In and a handful of pellet to the end of my nets and to the edge of both trees was followed by a banded 8mm to the end of my nets, and I also flicked out a few floaters to the edge of the right hand willow. The float soon slid away and a scrappy little Mirror of no more than 8ozs got me off the mark. Simon was off the mark as well and I soon had another couple of similar sized fish to keep the first one company . Now Rockells isn’t really about finesse normally, it’s a question of keeping the feed going in and catching quick, but it was noticeable that with so little water, playing fish was making the rest back off, so I was alternating between the end of my nets and across to the willow, while feeding every put in to hold the fish. The floaters weren’t drifting out of the swim, but nothing was touching them either .

Across on the other side I could see Keith who seemed to be picking up a few fish down his margin line ……

 

While Dave on the next peg looked like he’d set out his stall to fish his usual floater tactics that work well for him here ……

 

After about an hour I had about 12 fish, not enough by the usual standards so gave the paste rig a try, this is normally a banker for me here as it tends to produce a slightly better stamp of fish, but it wasn’t having the desired effect today as I was having to wait to long between bites and the fish that it did produce were of a similar size to the pellet fish so after 30 minutes that was up the bank . Despite keeping a few floaters going in nothing had shown for them so I just had to keep picking off odd fish here and there and at the end of 3 hours when Dave called the All-Out for a half time Weigh-In I had around 35 fish, the biggest of which might have gone 2lbs if I was lucky.

With a set of scales on each side of the lake we soon had it underway. John had 51¼lbs and Jim 29lbs. I weighed 41lbs and Simon 46½lbs. Terry had 25¼lbs while Vic managed 40lbs and Clive could only muster 19¼lbs. Not the greatest weights and we could tell by the pace of the weigh-in across the lake that there had been some better weights over there. Martin appeared with another coffee from Jean and the news that Dave and Al had both had 80lbs +.

At 2pm Dave called the All-In for the second half and it was just a question of carrying on with my approach and hope that some better fish would put in an appearance, and I kept flicking out a few floaters hoping they would do the job, but the only thing they seemed to attract were 3 geese ……

 

The small fish were still there, but were once again coming in fits and starts and at around a pound a time weren’t really large enough to build any sort of weight. I could see Dave across the lake was still taking fish at a steady rate and they appeared to be of a better stamp than the ones I was getting ……

 

Another look with the paste proved to be nothing but a waste of time, still yielding little fish, but at a slower rate than fishing pellet. The strange part was that Simon was catching on floaters in the next swim, whereas they were doing nothing for me. Meanwhile John down on Peg 10 was having a cracking session and steadily building a decent weight , as was Vic on Peg 16 who was finally finding some better fish on paste ……

 

I just plugged away amid rain showers to the end, and while I’d caught more in the 2nd session when Dave called the All-Out at 5pm I didn’t expect my 55 fish to weigh more than 60lbs . Thankfully the showers had stopped as we packed away, and with a set of scales at Clive’s peg we decided to get our part of the Weigh-In over and done with.

Poor Clive’s day hadn’t got any better with a meagre 16lbs to show for his efforts . Vic’s second half had been a definite improvement with 100¾lbs . Terry had 41¼lbs and Simon once again beat me with 71½lbs to my 65¼lbs. Jim had added 38¼lbs to his morning total, but John had the best weight on our bank with a fine 128½lbs .

So with our gear returned to the car park we all assembled as Dave worked out the results and monies. Winner on the day was Mr Chairman Dave with a total of 196¾lbs closely followed by Al on 193¼lbs while John’s total of 180¼lbs gave him 3rd on the day just ahead of Keith’s 176lbs. Six more ‘Ton+’ totals followed including my own 106¼lbs so while it would be harsh to say that it had been anything other than a good days fishing , however such is the level of catches that Rockells can produce that it’s safe to say that there were a few disappointed anglers that made their way home after the match.

Anyway the final club match of the season lies ahead at Hartleylands Farm on October 15th when we’ll be fishing The Reservoir, however prior to that I’m at Rolfs Lake on Saturday for the final match of The Jinx Series.

Marsh AC club match.

It was off down to a Private Lake in East Sussex today for a Marsh AC club match and I was hopeful that it would be a decent day as the lake had been fishing well recently .
It was a bit dull and grey as I looked out of the window this morning, but a quick look on the web reassured me that we were in for a good day weather wise , and after feeding the cats and drinking a couple of cups of coffee to fire up the old grey matter, I soon had the car loaded and was off to East Sussex. With no café close to hand I stopped off at McD’s in Bromley on the way where a couple of Sausage and Egg McMuffins were consumed before resuming the journey. It got a bit foggy on the A21, but not enough to delay things and I reached the fishery just after 8am.

There wasn’t our usual turn out today due to a number of reasons, meaning there were just 12 club members and 3 guests to make up the numbers, but at least we should have a bit of room . Al went off to peg out while everyone got there nets dipped. Bill G was guesting today and as he’s been running a match series there, people were quizzing him for some info. Dave had brought his daughter Chrissy to fish today, but rumour was that it was really to act as his carer . Anyway with the pegs sorted it was time for the draw, and Peg 2 on the dam wall was mine for the day, a short walk and a peg I seem to draw quite often on my visits there, and with Kevin on Peg 1, I should be good for a couple of cups of coffee . The pegs aren’t numbered at the lake, so if you take a look below you’ll see where we were all pegged ……

As you might guess, it didn’t take long to get my gear to my peg, and having fished it before I had a fair idea of how I was going to approach it. Now when you hear ‘dam wall’ you tend to think deep water, however it’s not the case here, apart from a small marginal shelf close in it just gently drops away to around 3ft which remains pretty constant.
I had planned to fish paste today so I set up 2 paste rigs, the first was a 0·2 NG XT Power Pencil on 0·18 Ultima Power Match finished off with a size 12 Guru MWG for a line at about 5mtrs straight out. I also set up another 0·2 NG XT Power Pencil on 0·16 Ultima Power Match finished off with a size 16 Guru MWG to fish pellet over this line if they didn’t want paste. The Margin paste line was taken care of by a 0.2 NG Edger on 0·18 Ultima Power Match finished off with a size 12 Guru MWG. Bait was GOT Atomic paste and a mix of 6 and 8mm pellets.

 

Jean spoilt me today as prior to the off I was treated not only to a cup of coffee, but also a freshly cooked Sausage and Bacon roll . Sitting there waiting for the off, the fog from earlier had burnt off and a bright sunny day lay ahead. In fact I felt we could do with a bit more cloud as a bright sunny day could make for a hard days fishing.

Anyway the All-In was called at 10am so we would soon find out. A pot of pellet at 5mtrs and some down the margins, then I shipped a banded 8mm out onto the 5mtr line. My first bite proved to be a bit of a false dawn as a Carp shot off before rolling on top as the rig came flying back with a scale on the hook . Next came a Roach, but it was Carp or nothing for me today and I hadn’t put a silvers net in, so it was popped back.

Clive had got off to a good start tucked awayon Peg 3 fishing to the willow and had taken 3 Carp almost straight away leaving everyone playing catch up already ……

 

In general though sport was far from hectic from what I could see and from my vantage point on the dam wall I had a good view of all those fishing the railway bank and on the meadow bank ……

 

I managed to get off the mark shortly after when my float slid away, and after a brief scrap a Mirror of around 4lbs was safely in the net . There’s a good head of carp in the lake that average around 5lbs and it’s generally reckoned that 20 of them will normally give you a ton, but there’s also a good percentage that are considerably larger, and a few of them in the course of a session can really boost your weight. After that initial fish I changed to the paste rig, and after a few minutes the float buried and the culprit this time was a Common, again around the 4lbs mark but welcome none the less . I could see Simon over on the railway bank and although he’d had a couple of fish, he appeared to be struggling like me ……

 

It was becoming obvious already that Clive would take some stopping today, as although I couldn’t really see him from where I was pegged, I could certainly hear the splashing as what seemed like a constant stream of fish were played and netted . I could see that Mick up on Peg on Peg 11 was starting to take the odd fish and knew that he might do some damage as well ……

 

My paste fish seemed to be an solitary one so I reverted to the pellet and over the course of the next 90 minutes or so managed to add another 3 Carp to my total, all of which seemed to be around the 4lb mark. The noticeable thing was that I needed a ripple on the water to get a bite, as soon as the ripple stopped so would any chance of a bite .
So with it flat calm in front of me by 1pm I re-fed and took a stroll with the camera……

 

Kev had just had his 1st fish of the day on the feeder, while Keith was admitting to 5 in the net. Vic in truth was looking a little tired, probably due to the fact he’d caught 400lbs at Alders the day before, only to finish second to a weight of 534lbs!!!!!! However he was still into a Carp as I looked on ……

 

John had managed a few as well, but Martin was having a bit of a grim time . Mick was indeed catching despite being plagued by small Perch. Bill was locked in a battle with the Carp in his peg and unfortunately the score was Carp 8 – 4 Bill at that point . He was fishing corn across to the island and as I looked on he was into another fish, a good photo opportunity, but before I could even remove the lens cap the score became 9 – 4. Al was having a bit of a moan up and insisting he was having a bad day so I left him to it . As I continued round I met Dave coming the other way who reckoned he had 4, but was struggling. Next up came Dave’s daughter Chrissy, she’d lost a good fish first put in, and was now fishing her margins ……

 

Terry was having a bit of a struggle once more, but Paul was putting a few together on the method feeder to the edge of the island, it must have been solid out there as Paul had a fish take a bare hook as he cast to the island prior to the start of the match . It hadn’t got any better for Simon either and he was hoping for an improvement in the latter stages. Clive however was sitting very much in the pound seats, his corner peg had the wind blowing into it and a willow providing plenty of cover to fish to ……

 

Back to my peg and Jean had another coffee waiting for me . I started back on the paste, but couldn’t get a touch on it from any of my lines, so I was soon back to fishing the pellet and slowly started to pick up the odd fish, however they were all of the same stamp, around the 4lb mark without a hint of a better bonus fish. Keith however had started to alternate between his long line and his margin and was starting to put a run of fish together over on peg 15 ……

 

Try as I may I just couldn’t get a run of fish going, it was just a case of nicking the odd fish as the chance arose, and even that was interrupted by a number of foul hookers as the afternoon wore on. Simon did manage another couple of fish late on but it was far from the improvement he’d been hoping for ……

 

I just stuck at it and had 14 fish in the net when the All-Out was called at 4pm. I felt that I had around 60lbs in the nets, and soon had my gear packed away and back in the car before the Weigh-In started from Peg 1. Kev kicked things off with just 17lbs and I was almost spot on when my fish registered 60½lbs. Clive had 25 fish and after 4 weighs recorded 149¼lbs which would prove to be unbeatable on the day . Simon had 38½lbs to show for his efforts, while Paul put 77½lbs on the scales. Terry had 42lbs and Dave 47¼lbs while Chrissy managed 20lbs. Al had been telling everyone what a bad day he’d had but still put 81¼lbs on the scales . Bill’s score ended up 21 – 13 in favour of the Carp for 50¼lbs. Mick had kept going all afternoon for 124¼lbs and 2nd on the day . Martin managed just 18¼lbs while John had 46lbs including a new PB Carp to show for his efforts. Vic had 68½lbs while Keith was last to weigh, and his 103½lbs gave him 3rd overall .

So back to the car park where Dave sorted out the results and monies Next up for Marsh AC is a trip to Rockells Farm in 2 weeks time, a venue that I always look forward to .
Before that however I have a trip to Rolfs on Thursday for a match with the  TalkAngling  lads and then a return to The Private Lake on Saturday to fish one of Bill G’s Matches.

Marsh AC club match.

Well it’s off to Essex for me today and a club match at Colemans Cottage on Wood Lake.
The view out of the window this morning promised a nice sunny day ahead and after a couple of cups of coffee and having fed the cats and loaded the car I was off and heading for Whitam in Essex, and a trouble free run down saw me pulling into the car park around 7·30am, where Kevin and Jean, along with Simon were already in attendance . Into the fishery lodge for a Large Breakfast , and we were soon joined by Terry Keith and Pete along with Lee, Dave and a couple of other Morefax lads who were joining us today along with a couple of guests, so it should be a good turn out . Soon the rest of the gang arrived and with breakfast taken care of I went outside to discuss the prospects for the day ahead.
The club normally fishes Pathfield Lake when we visit Colemans, so this is something new, at least for me as I’ve never fished Wood Lake before, but luckily for me Paul Law (justin case) has furnished me with a detailed peg by peg rundown on the lake so I wasn’t not going into it totally blind . Dave soon had the monies collected and the draw up and running and after dipping into the bag I found myself with peg 14 for the day, which according to Paul’s run down was just an average peg.

So collecting my tackle I made my way down to my peg. Terry was on peg 1, with peg 2 drawn for Paul who was running late due to a blow out on the way down . Keith was on peg 6 (one Paul had reckoned was worth running to ) with Pete Thompson on peg 8. Tony Roberts was on 10, Clive on 11 and Simon on 12 with 13 not drawn. To my left was Martin on peg 15 while I could see Dave in the corner on peg 18.

Settling into the peg it was time to decide how to tackle it. I had a gap between 2 islands out in front I elected to cover that with a waggler and got out a Shakespeare Micro that was already set up with a 2AA peacock insert waggler. I opted for 3 pole lines. Straight out at 6mtrs where I had 5ft of water with a Sackup CX 4×12 pencil on 0·16 Ultima Power Match finishing with size 16 Guru MWG, and 2 margin rigs, both NG 0·3 XT Sampson margin’s on 0·16 Ultima Power Match finishing with size 16 Guru MWG’s plus a paste rig of an NG 0·2 Margin paste float on 0·20 Ultima Power Match finished off with size 12 Fox series 2. Bait was my usual combination of 6mm hard pellet for feed with 6 and 8mm pellets for the hook along with some corn, a selection of GOT Baits soft hookers and GOT Atomic Paste (green halibut).

Kevin had arrived while I was setting up with a cup of coffee and with a bit of time prior to the off I strolled back to the car to collect a bottle of water, only to find Paul arriving by Taxi (having changed his blown out tyre only to find the spare knackered as well !!!!!!!!!!! ) so helped him to his peg with his gear, then made my way back to mine. At 10am Dave signalled the All-In and we were off . 2 big pots of pellet at 6mtrs followed by a handful in each margin were then followed by a banded 8mm shipped out to the 6mm line. A couple of tentative digs then the float buried resulting in a Carp tearing off and the rig flying back with a scale on the hook , not quite the start I’d hoped for, but at least there were some fish about. Next put in the float buries and it’s fish on again, a good solid surge and it didn’t want to get it’s head up, a bit more pressure and up it popped, not he expected Carp but a Barbel and at around 3lbs a nice way to get off the mark . A couple of Carp quickly followed this, not big fish, but really solid, giving a good account of themselves which I estimated at around 4lbs each.

Looking around I could see that Martin had a fish on the feeder that he was playing and most were starting to find a bit of sport, so it was looking like it should be a good day for most, in fact I looked down toward Dave and saw that he was engaged in what looked like a tug of war with plenty of red hydro streaming from his top kit ……

For the next couple of hours it was just a question of things ticking over, a couple of Carp, then a Barbel or two, still putting some weight in the net, but I couldn’t seem to up my catch rate . I’d been using my clicker as there’s a net limit at Colemans which I didn’t want to fall foul of, and reckoned I had about 35lbs of carp by 12·30pm. I’d had a look down both margins, the right hand had produced hardly anything though despite the next peg being empty, so decided to concentrate on the left hand one. With this in mind I re fed it quite heavily and took a stroll with the camera to allow it to settle and take my coffee mug back to Jean .

Looking down from my vantage point I saw that Clive was busy unhooking a fish that he’d just netted ……

While on the next peg along Tony was doing his best to get the landing net under a fish of his own ……

 Pete had left his peg, but I could see him sitting next to Keith and having a chat with him as he netted a small carp …….

 Terry was being a bit cagey as to what he had exactly, but didn’t reckon he was setting the place on fire. Paul was having a frustrating time trying to tempt some action from his margins, but Rod seemed to be enjoying a bit of sport ……

 Kev was owning up to 3 fish and hoping things would pick up for him later in the day, and looking across I could see Lee and Judy on adjacent pegs ……

 Strolling back Keith reckoned he had around 35lbs but was adamant that Pete was doing better , and I couldn’t help notice that he was fishing short just in front of his nets, and made me realise that last year I’d caught tight to my nets on Pathfield, perhaps that was the way to go today ……

 Pete was back on his peg and of course though that Keith was just edging him as he struck into a carp just as I moved on ……

 Indeed it was starting to become obvious that the fish were starting to get their heads down, and I could see Ken on the far bank getting ready to slide a small Carp over the net ……

 Tony was attached to yet another fish, that seemed to be giving a good account of itself with plenty of orange vespe coming out of his top kit …….

 and there was Clive just slipping the landing net under yet another fish that he’d taken on the method feeder ……

 Simon however wasn’t feeling so positive, complaining that he’d never lost as many fish as he’d done today and considering that he’d lost a fair few on the last match at Mill Barn, you could safely say that he wasn’t best pleased ……

 Back at my peg I dropped my 6mtr rig in on a top 3 at the end of my nets and found just a couple of inches less on the depth, so fed a handful of pellet there and stuck a 6mm pellet on the band. This soon produced a Barbel of around 3lbs and was swiftly followed by a couple more , then a small Carp as Dave arrived with another Mug of coffee from Jean . The next fish made me jump as an acrobatic skimmer did a passable impression of a Trout leaping clear of the water as I struck . Another couple of Barbel followed and I’d noticed Al on peg 22 collecting a second carp net so he was obviously going well and from what I could see was fishing the method. Dave was still catching well and he was next to go for a second net. Another small carp followed for me before a couple of foul hookers ran me ragged and seemed to kill the swim .

Time for a look in the margin with the paste rig, a couple of knocks and the float buried , the strike meeting with firm resistance as a good fish powered of into open water. The fish stayed deep not wanting to get its head up, but steady pressure finally told as a double figure Mirror slid into the waiting landing net . With that fish I reckoned I had about 55lbs in the net so went and got a second carp net for myself .
Back in with the paste and it was obvious that the fish were there as the float buried straight away, a barbel this time with a taste for paste, and I took another 7 carp before Paul came up to see how I was doing with 15 minutes to go. Unfortunately this coincided with a spate of iffy bites and I only managed one more Carp before Dave called the All-Out at 4pm while he played a final fish.

Packing my kit up and chatting to Martin I was convinced that I had around 80-90lbs, but I wasn’t really sure as I’d got it somewhat wrong last year when we fished Pathfield but with the kit packed away in the car all would be revealed as I set off for the weigh-in. Terry kicked off with 63¼lbs from peg 1 , which Keith topped from Peg 6 with 86¾lbs just edging out Pete’s level 86lbs to take the bragging rights on their trip home to Milton Keynes .

Tony on peg 10 put 70lbs+ on the scales with his first net, but thankfully Graham (The Owner) decreed that as long as it wasn’t over 80lbs there would be no penalty. His final tally was 143¼lbs, a total that wouldn’t be beaten ensuring he took the honours on the day . Clive managed 69½lbs and Simon just 40lbs.
Round to my peg and as soon as I lifted my 1st net I knew that I’d underestimated as well , thankfully it came in under 80lbs and my total of 141½lbs that would be good enough for 2nd today . Dave had a good day as well on peg 18 with 122¼lbs and Nick Bondeau recorded a new PB match weight of 71lbs .

Al was left regretting a slow last half hour when his weight came out at 131lbs but still ended up 3rd overall . Lee Rose on peg 34 took the best weight among the Morefax lads with a level 98lbs while Roger, Ken and Graham managed 50lb weights . So back to the fishery lodge for coffee and results.
Dave soon had the results and the sections sorted and payed out, 1700lbs + had been weighed in for an average of 62lbs+ per angler so it was fair to say a decent day had been had by most . Next up for Marsh AC is Blasford Hill on August 13th.

For me however the next stop is 3 days at Rolfs Lake next weekend for Dave’s Friday Invitation match and the MD’s Pairs weekend .