Saturday was the last match of the year for Marsh AC, and the chosen venue was The Match Lake at Hawkhurst in Kent, to hopefully finish off the match calendar in fine style :) . With the car loaded I set off around 7am with the forecaster on the radio promising a fine sunny day ahead 8-). By the time I reached Badgers Mount there was thick fog and I'd also had a phonecall from Keith (Gandhi) who was traveling down from Milton Keynes to guest on todays match. The fog hung around all the way down to Hawkhurst and I pulled into the car park just after 8am.
There was a reasonable turn out assembled as we had a total of 5 guests joining us today and as the on site café wouldn't open till 9am we decided to draw and set up beforehand and then have breakfast before starting the match around 10am .
Into the draw and I came away with peg 15, just about half way up the left hand bank as you look from the car park.
...and there was quite an erie silence as everyone settled into their pegs shrouded in fog...........
I was going to keep the set up simple. 1 line at around 7mtrs and another in the margin against the boards. Rig wise i set up 3 rigs consisting of Malman 4x12 Adam's on 0·18 to size 16 Drennan Carp Match hooks . 1 to fish at depth at 7mtrs (around 4 ft) another shallow and the 3rd for the margin where I had around 2ft on the shelf. I also set up the pellet waggler, but wasn't expecting to use it unless I struggled on the pole. Bait wise I went with 8mm fishery pellet with 6mm expanders and corn for change baits while feed was taken care of by 4 and 6mm fishery pellets .
With the fog still hanging around I could just see Clive trying for some atmospheric shots with his camera :).........
....... as i strolled up for a spot of breakfast just after 9am. I've got to say that the Full English at Hawkhurst is well worth the £5
, and the banter was soon flowing as everyone tucked in. Dave had decided to run a little pairs match with-in the match and sorted out the draw for that over breakfast as well. As we made our way back to the lake it was bathed in sunshine, the sun having burnt off the fog and Dave finally called the All-in at 10·15am.I fed 2 large pots of pellet on the 7mtr line to try and nail any fish in the vicinity to the deck straight away and a handfull on the margin line and shipped an 8mm banded pellet onto the 7mtr line where i could see the odd bubble coming up over the feed already. Judy opposite me was into a fish straight away.........
I was just lifting the rig a foot and letting it drop back and after a couple of minutes the float dipped and I lifted into it and was into my 1st Carp of the day, a nice little Common of around 1½lbs . A welcome start as on the 2 previous occasions I've fished Hawkhurst this year it's been a bit of a struggle with both the matches being low weight affairs :(.
It was just a case of trying to settle into a rhythm, flicking a pinch of pellet out and constantly working the rig to try and induce a bite.
Worryingly sport seemed slow for most :-/, though Bill on 19 and Keith on 17 had seen a bit of action , Poor Vince however was draw between the two of them and was having a real struggle just to get a bite
. With an hour gone I had 10 fish in the net which was better than most from what I could see .I decided to have a look and see if the constant feed had brought the fish up off the bottom as I could see a few cruising about, but wasted 30 minutes for just 2 small fish as I tried to make it work . Reverting back to the depth rig I was still picking up regular fish but was suffering with the odd foul hooker, however from what I could see I was still doing better than most, indeed Terry to my left on peg 14 was heard to tell me to "give it a rest" as he was struggling despite having the cover of the tree to his right. Tony was stuck up on corner peg 10 all on his own and did seem to be getting a few...............
It didn't seem to matter what I tried, I couldn't up my catch rate, but by sticking at it I was getting a fish every 5-6 minutes and slowly building a decent weight . Looking down to my right I could see that Roger on 16 was struggling, while Keith was still catching though not as regularly as me.
Bill down on 19 seemed to have to stand to net his fish with yards of elastic streaming out of his pole. I heard someone say he was catching lumps, but was pretty sure that he was just on light elastics as the fish at Hawkhurst give a good account of themselves .
Generally sport was slow though, with even the noted pegs struggling to put together a few fish, Colin was trying hard to put a few fish together from his peg, but just couldn't seem to get to grips with it today ..........
With a couple of hours to go Dave started to put a few together from down the edge ........
.........so I had a look down my margin swim, but after 10 minutes without a bite I wrote it off as a bad job and went back to 7mtrs for the rest of the match :). Despite trying the corn and expanders the only thing I could get a bite on was the 8mm banded pellet and even those only produced small dips which had to be struck, if you left it, waiting for it to develop further you'd missed it, but at least I kept putting fish in the net and when Dave called the All-out at 4·15pm I'd managed to put 64 fish in my nets .
As I packed away my gear it was obvious from the talk going on it had been a bit of a struggle for most. Vince strolled up to give me yet another £1 as he had to shoot off quickly to sort out a family problem and he'd tipped back knowing his 14 fish wouldn't be enough on the day ;).
So round with the scales for the weigh-in and Alan was soon leading with around 50½bs from peg 2 but relinquished it to Dave on 62¾lbs and then Tony up on corner peg 10 who put 69bs on the scales. When they got to me on peg 15 my two nets came to a satisfying 118lbs for the match win
. Keith managed a creditable 81½bs and third on the day on his first visit to the venue ;), while Bill put the only other Ton of the day on the scales with his fish weighing 106½bs for second place :).So that's the Marsh AC matches done for the year. It's been a pretty good year for me on the club matches one way or another, and they've all been fished in a friendly atmosphere with plenty of laughs and banter along the way. I'd like to say a BIG THANK YOU to Dave for organising things on our behalf, and I'm sure I speak for all the members and guests who've joined us over the year when I say that his efforts are much appreciated
. Let's do it all again next year. 
You can find my Blog report HERE
