Alders Farm - Ash Lake 04/07/2020

[Spamwham]

13 fished today - dull, mild and very breezy throughout with occasional 'mizzle'.
It was a surprise to see that all the nearside bushes and vegetation from peg 30 to about peg 23 had been completely cleared. Strange to see them in glorious isolation. I understand from Trevor that this was done as part of a set of actions to help maintain/improve water quality and oxygen levels.

Fishing today was for the most part pretty steady. Mick had his best drawing hand out again for peg 30 and secured the win with a solid 170lb.
The far bank was a closely fought contest with several anglers in it and only a few pounds separating the top weights. Keith came out ahead for 2nd place with 134lb, closely followed by Mark with 131lb for 3rd. Gino (130lb) was close and Kyle (126lb) secured his first ever match ton. Well done to all.

Result:
1. Mick peg 30 - 170-12lb
2. Keith peg 5 - 134-04lb
3. Mark peg 4 - 131-12lb
4. Gino peg 1 - 130-00lb
5. Kyle peg 2 - 126-08lb
6. John peg 29 - 123-04lb
7. Clive peg 8 - 112-12lb
8. Peter (guest) peg 3 - 105-04lb
9. Tony R peg 6 - 101-04lb
10. Josh peg 28 - 96-04lb
11. Chris T peg 12 - 91-08lb
12. Dave C peg 27 - 72-00lb
13. Jim peg 10 - 44-14lb

Section winners 1-5 Keith £10, 6-12 Clive £8, 27-30 Mick £8 - all to be deducted from next match subs. Well done fellas.

[keith]

Good close match today. A couple of fish either way could have swung things around.

[Chris T]

Well done chaps!

[Spamwham]

Keith - I blew it in the first hour - diddly squat, while you were in from the off.
Chris - time for some serious discipline for your drawing hand mate. Clive reckons repeatedly shutting it in the car boot lid does the trick for him (well some times)
Mugger - good to see you again mate - must be a long old day for you

[keith]

Getting back into the club matches after a long lay off, when quite rightly no fishing was allowed. This would be my second match back and still feeling my way back in. A section win and second place overall on the last match at Puddledock Snake Lake settled the nerves and this match is on my local fishery. I had not visited the lake before the week prior when I had a little dabble on peg 6 whilst sorting out elastics, floats and rigs etc. Peg 5 was being rebuilt during that session and I still caught well despite Pete and Pop Up efforts to distract me.

As I live locally, I did not see the rush to get there as soon as the fishery opened, much preferring to give it 30 minutes to settle down. Arriving into the car park, I managed to sneak in next to the shop and order a couple of pints of maggot, more as a back up, in case my plan of 6mm hard pellet did not work. Nets dipped and packed away it was time for the draw.

As a section winner from the previous round I only needed to fork out the princely sum of £2 to fish today, and that included pools money. We do not win big in this club. Mick as usual was already ahead of me, making sure he stood behind the F%^K O*^ line before pointing to his folded up peg number. Can you believe it Peg 30 comes out, a peg that has won so many matches recently it was unbelievable. I followed him into the queue and tell Dave any peg will do. Out comes peg 5 or 7. Peg 5 if its has been completely rebuilt or peg 7 if not.

We had pegs 1-12 and 27 to 30, so all the pegs were capable of throwing up a weight, My section was Gino on 1, Kyle on 2, Pete Morton on 3, guesting with his former club and having a sneaky practice before the MDs weekend later this month, and Mark Fox on 4. Tony Roberts was on my peg from during the week, peg 6.









I had opted to fish 6mm pellet on 2+2 line to start, using a small .4g diamond to a sixe 16 KKMB. Red hydro should tame the 3 to 4lb fish, as they tend to go all over the place. A margin rig to the left hand side in 12 inches of water for later on during the match. I also set up a small slim float.3g to a size 14 KKMB to fish top three and just off deck on the 2+2 line.



Tony tucking into a boiled egg and soldiers!!!!!

At the all in I started feeding by toss pot 4mm fishery pellets with a cap full of the "price is right" liquid. (Not sure on how much to add yet). Fishing with a banded 6mm on the hook I was soon getting indications, I was missing a few bites but after a couple of minutes I was into my first fish, around 2lb. A few more followed, lifting and dropping the pellet to get the best from it. After an hour I had 8 fish but had lost the same amount, either foul hooked or just bumping them with the red hydro. Switching to purple hydro improved things slightly but I was still foul hooking and pulling out of fish.

Hours two and three flew by, no real bagging runs, just plodding away, landing one, losing one. Constantly changing shotting, depths etc to see if I fall upon the required method on the day. Word was that Kyle, Gino and Pete were catching well on 1,2 and 3 whilst Mark and Tony were nicking a few down the edges. I thought there was nothing between Mark and I but felt I was slightly ahead of Tony, so it was heads down.

Plugging away on the 2+2 lines seemed fruitless, so I decided to go down the edge with an hour to go. I had started on maggot feeding around 30 every 30 seconds, and fishing 5 maggots on the hook. Perch, Perch and a few more Perch. Back to pellet and start feeding pellet and after a couple of minutes the float goes and purple hydro comes out of the kit and a good rate of knots. Taking me all over the place a fish around 4lb and slightly better stamp than those previously caught. A switch back to red hydro and more control was welcome. I was also not bumping or foul hooking fish. I just had to ignore the little dips on the float and strike at the more positive bites.

At the all in, I thought it was close, no one was admitting to a lot, bloody lying anglers, glad I am not like them. The only one with a real grin on his face was Kyle, he knew he had broken the 100lb mark for the first time. Well done Kyle.



Kyle with a PB weight of 126-08



Foxy with part of his 131-12

Kyle and Tony grabbed the scales and started weighing in.

1st Mick Wright 170-12 Section Winner

2nd Keith Ashby 134-04 Section Winner

3rd Mark Fox 131-12

4th Gino Exell 130-00

5th Kyle Deane 126-08

6th John Holdsworth 123-04

7th Clive Pritchard 112-12 Section Winner

8th Peter Morton 105-04

9th Tony Roberts 101-04

10th Josh Donovan 96-04

11th Chris Thomas 91-08

12th Dave Collier 72-00

13th Jim Boase 44-14

Overall the lake has fished well and fair. Mick on peg 30 was always going to take some stopping but the rest of us were only separated by a couple of fish here and there. A rare MK 1-2.Well done to Mick, Keith and Clive on winning their sections. Mick has clawed back his first MK Nugget of the year making it 3-1 to me. Next match is on Tuesday at Alders on the Costcutter match.

[Spamwham]

Nice one Keith - good to see the blog is alive and well.

At the all in, I thought it was close, no one was admitting to a lot, bloody lying anglers, glad I am not like them.

[Mugger]

Cheers all, enjoyed the day despite making an absolute mess of a decent draw. My own fault as I decided that it would be a good day to have a go at making Maggot work, despite a voice in my head telling me not to be stupid and stick with pellet.
Well 90 minutes of getting Perched to death finally scrambled my brain before I sacked the maggots off and reverted to pellet. Unfortunately that didn't start well as the little buggers continued to hang themselves on 8mm pellets for 30 minutes before the Carp turned up.

Happy at the end of the day to have managed a TON despite the set backs and good to catch up with you all once more.
Congratulations to Kyle on his first ever match TON Hopefully see a few of you at the end of the month for the MD's bash.

PS: Not a bad trip back, indoors with my feet up by 7-30pm

[keith]

Pete,

I blame the maggots. I used some of the ones you gave me on Saturday, today and I am sure they are defective . Had a couple of carp eventually, but struggled to catch perch.

Pellet by far the better bait.

Keith