Where at the weekend

[oneabung]

Where did you all go at the weekend and how did you get on?

I went to a small open on Woodhouse Grange near Doncaster, normally this is won with well over a ton and plently of backup weights. Me and my dad both went, i with the plan to fish up in the water and he with a paste attack. Having got up at 7 to find it blowing a gale and about 10 degrees colder than friday i thought there goes any hope of fishing up today and rapidly got an extra batch of paste out of the freezer.

Arriving at the venue we saw the lake had a boat sunk in the middle - looked like a small fishing trawler which was interesting, and i drew one peg off this, the bloke next to me fished a feeder to the boat - managing to hook it on numerous occassions, he had it on the mast, the deck, inside the cabin .... to cut a long story short where we were we had the wind off our backs and struggled to get bites - I only had three small carp and chucked back with halk an hour to go... the change in weather screwed the whole venue and the winner only had 30lb on a venue where 30lb would normally be last at this time of year!

[echoromeo]

Weather can play havoc with it at this time of year, had a similar one Thursday and Saturday where the wind made shallow fishing a chore, though some were able to master it it did affect both sets of match weights.

[royst]

Sat next to Eric (echoromeo) and got battered on both sides. As you say the strong wind played a big part, and my up in the water meat approach was a non starter. Gave me a chance to give paste a try, and struggled to compete with the guys either side who were more proficient. The lake bed around me seemed very uneven and I struggled to find a flat bit, which resulted in false bites with the paste sliding down the slopes. I suppose I should have spent more time plumbing around at the start. Ended up with 44lb, with sixtys either side.

[oneabung]

Personally I NEVER fish the paste on a flat bit, I want to find a slope to fish it on - this makes the bites easier to hit and less liners etc.... try finding a slope and fishing half way up it on the paste - at the start plumb the bottom and top of the slope your intending to fish then mark these depths on your top three (i.e. with tippex) then your float goes half way between the two marks, this allows you to play around with the depths all day and you know where you put your rig it you can easily find out how the fish want it and go from there... just my take on it, I'm sure loads of people do it differently!

[Pete M]

Had the pleasure of being one of the sixties next to Royst on Saturday. ;D
Here's my report..........

Climbing into the car to set off on the 120+ mile trip it was lashing down, Proper Jinx Series weather for a change. I stopped off in Battersea for breakfast as usual, and by the time I reached the M40 the rain had stopped.
I arrived at Manor Farm around 11am to find Me(simon) already in attendance having had a stroll round Windmill Lake.
Time for a cuppa and a cheeseburger .
Keith arrived with David and the obligatory photo's of his new granddaughter ;D ;D ;D Yes that's right, just in case you didn't know Keith is now a Granddad. ;D ;D ;D

As the rest arrived we took a stroll round ourselves. Windmill is the most established of the lakes on the complex with a couple of islands and features to fish to in most pegs and a good spread of depths from 5-12 feet. However it was very obvious that there was a fair bit of water missing with all the pegs short of the water!!! the level must be about 3 feet down on normal.

The draw as ever on Jinx matches was late as Malc rolled in past noon and went to peg out as with only 20 of us fishing we could leave out a few tight pegs. At least you can park behind or close to the majority of pegs so it's not to much of a struggle.

I ended up with peg 8 with Royst on peg7 to my left for company and Eric (ejayar) next down on peg 6. To my right on peg 9??? None other than THE JINX himself .



The all in came at 1·30 pm and I was nowhere near ready having made a complete mess of trying to set up a pellet waggler, putting the line through the legs on one eye and then having corrected that finding a wind-knot in the line . Other rigs were just a top2 and a top3 as there was plenty of water straight in front. Grey skies threatened rain and a blustery wind threatened to make presentation difficult for those on the more exposed pegs. At least we could set up close to the water on our side, while opposite they had to set up on their platforms as can be seen by this photo....



Really the fishing was reasonably simple feeding 4mm pellet and fishing paste soon started producing pasty sized carp, much to Malc's disgust as he doesn't count these as real fish .

Royst was to be heard beating himself up on the next peg as he struggled to get to grips with trying to fish paste, struggling to hit the bites and then loosing some of those that he managed to hook .

A couple of hours in and I was sure I heard a "crack" and sure enough here was a top3 and part of a No4 belonging to Eric going down like the Titanic with a Carp attached .This forced Eric into fishing a top3 for the rest of the match as he didn't have a spare No4 (well he did, but didn't remember till the end of the match )

Needless to say there was a bit of banter between Malc and myself during the match, one of the main topics being Hydrolastic. "Just point it at the fish and watch it come back to you" what a load of BO***CKS "Pump it and lift to lock it" That's why Malc had to stand on his box to net a 2lb'er I suppose ;D.

I kept catching sporadically all through the day, i even had a look at the pellet waggler, getting a Carp and a Chub, but the wind made presentation to awkward, so I stayed on a top2 for the rest of the match.

2½hrs in and a stomach churning stench wafted to my nostrils Malc had got his cat meat out!!!!!!!!
Now this hadn't been kept in a tin but had been fermenting in a plastic bag in his car for gawd knows how long!!!! He even reckoned there were things moving in it I wasn't about to go and look .



With about an hour to go David A popped up for a chat, having resigned himself to forking out another £1 to Gem (The Minx) who was fishing her 1st JINX match. Royst was still muttering about never fishing paste again and a look further up the bank revealed Matt catching at a far steadier rate than anyone else, while Bevan Boy(Brian) had been steadily catching most of the day as had been Dirk on the peg to Brian's right.



6·30pm and weigh in time and the scales reveal 69lbs 4ozs and a pleasing section win for me edging eric out of the section money .
Further round Matt puts an unbeatable 107lbs onto the scales for the win on the day, having fished paste and slop up in the water.



Moving round The Minx had done more than enough to part David from another £1 . Dirk managed a very creditable 92lbs (just missing out on a Jinx Ton again) for 2nd to pip Brian's 83lbs 3rd place weight, in the process winning the section, thus ensuring that the series was kept alive to the last Match at Rolf's.

So next up it's the Final round of the series at Rolf's. How will it all turn out? We'll see on Saturday 9th September.

[Brian G]

As always a great write up Peter, plus some great photos, nice weights as well.

[Pete M]

Here's the total weights from the day.

Peg 2…......Matt N…….........…107lb
Peg 13…....Dirk W.……............92lb 12oz
Peg 12…....Brian B..…..........…83lb 12oz
Peg 8…......Peter M….............69lb 4oz
Peg 6…......Eric R……..............65lb
Peg 11…....Dave M….…...........55lb
Peg 20.…...Mark C…..…...........55lb
Peg 15……..Geoff E……............52lb
Peg 9…......Malc D..….............46lb 4oz
Peg 10.…...Jimmy L................46lb 4oz
Peg 7…......Roy R…................44lb 4oz
Peg 19…....Tim W..…...........….44lb
Peg 16…....Keith A.................43lb
Peg 3…......Steve W..........…...30lb 8oz
Peg 18…....Gemma D...............27lb 8oz (Guest)
Peg 14.…...Nick W..................23lb
Peg 17…....Ant H…..................22lb 8oz
Peg 5.….....Derek R…...............10lb (Guest)
Peg 1…......Simon R…................7lb
Peg 4.….....Dave A……...............6lb 4oz


Total Weight put on the scales was 934lb 12oz.

[Pete M]

So how did everyone do this weekend?

Over on MD's we had arranged a little match for Saturday at Monk Lakes on Match Lake 2, the winner to be crowned MD's Southern Individual Champion 2006.

Having dropped Maria off at work at 6am and then loaded the car up, I took a leisurely drive down to Monk Lakes arriving earlier than anticipated at around 8am. Once again the fishery had put the "Welcome " sign out, and after parking up I thought I'd take a quick look at match lake 2, only to find that Terry (wily) Clive (blackhydro) & Darren (badatfishing) along with RonB had beaten me to it .

A quick look confirmed that you would either have the wind full in your face all day or off your back depending on your draw.

Some seemed to fancy peg45, whether for the short walk or the fact it was a corner end-peg was open to debate, whoever drew it would have the wind full in their face however with very little chance of getting a brolly up should the threatened bad weather appear .

Back for a bit of breakfast and the draw, and pulling into the car park was a white Carlton estate heralding Dai's arrival for his 1st outing since he had his operation. He'd spoken to me a couple of days earlier saying that he fancied it having not been out for months, and my mention that he just might just finally catch a [orange]GOLDEN TENCH [/orange]here, probably made his mind up though ;D.

At the draw Vince announced that the previous match had been won from peg 45, so you can imagine just how delighted he was to see it resting in my hand when I pulled it out of the hat .

Setting up it was obvious that fishing long up in the water would be hard work, and as I had been off work for the previous 3 days with a pulled muscle in my back it wasn't really an option for me . Plumbing up though revealed a good 2½ feet on a top 2 line with just 3 feet at about 5 meters.
With every other peg missed out I was pretty sure that I could catch close , so made up my mind to go for it from the off, and with Clive (blackhydro) to my left setting up to fish further out I would be able to see if I needed to lengthen my line as things progressed .

11am and Vince called all-in and I fed 3 lines, 2 just a comfortable underarm for 4mm pellets and another cupping in at 5 meters. Baits for the day were just GOT 6mm expanders and paste, but before I could put a pellet on a shout from Dai had me running down the bank to capture this moment .....

.......... Just the sort of thing that makes it all worthwhile, the smile wouldn't leave Dai's face for the rest of the match ;D.
Back on my peg and I dropped the top2 rig in and the float just kept going!! Had I overshotted it? obviously not as the black hydro streamed out of the top. 30 seconds later and an 8oz Barbel is safely in the net and I'm off and running .
Looking around it was soon evident that plenty of people were putting a few fish in their nets and miraculously the wind was holding the threat of rain off despite plenty of grey clouds scudding past.
It soon became evident that my peg appeared to be solid with small Barbel, super fit fish in perfect condition that gave a good account of themselves on soft set Black Hydro.

Now a constant bone of contention on forums is Barbel in still waters, I can only say that these fish in Monks are as fit as any that I've caught in rivers over the years and appear none the worse for wear due to their environment.
Indeed they have been bred at the fish farm that adjoins the Monk Lakes complex.

Sport was steady and with 3 and a bit hours gone Dave the Fish came along for his customary chat while he had a sarnie, and was admitting to around 40lbs for his efforts so far . I estimated I had around 100 fish split between my 2 nets and decided to use a 3rd net for the final part of the match. Getting up to reposition my nets, I slipped !!!!!! Both feet straight in past my ankles , thankfully I had a spare pair of boots in the car, so a quick time out to change and sort things out left me with around 1½hrs to go.

Thankfully despite this disruption they were still there and I caught steadily right up to the end at 4pm landing my last fish as Vince called the all out .

Weigh in time, and our bank had obviously been Barbel Alley, Dave starting off with 65lb just edging RonB's 63lb. Dai proving he was back in the groove putting a very creditable 81½lbs on for a section win, Clive just missing out with 78½lbs.

My 3 nets totaled 100½lbs putting me into pole, but with Nick Gilbert admitting to 80lbs or maybe a tad more?

Next up was Polemad who had been opposite me, just missing out on a "TON" with 95lbs.

Then we came to Mr Gilbert. What can I say? other than [red]"I'll NEVER BELIEVE ANOTHER OF HIS ESTIMATES AGAIN!!!!!!!" [/red]as his 80lbs guesstimate transformed itself into [red]170lbs!!!!!! [/red]a superb weight on the day comprising of nearly all carp, as with the wind behind him he had been able to catch up in the water on banded pellet all day.

It proved to be Nick's biggest ever match weight making him a worthy winner and MD's Southern Champion 2006 ;D .

The rest of the weigh-in produced yet more weights between 50-80lbs, even Vince's daughter Jessica managing a creditable 21lbs with dad's help .

While Vince himself despite spending time with Jessica, managed to put together a nice bag weighing 52½lbs .

So back for a welcome cuppa and the results revealing that the 16 anglers present had put 1120½lbs on the scales, an average of 70lbs per angler .

1st....Nick Gilbert.................. 170lbs 00ozs
2nd...Pete Morton................. 100lbs 08ozs
3rd....Polemad........................ 95lbs 00ozs
4th....Dai Fish........................ 81lbs 08ozs
5th....John Brimicombe............. 80lbs 08ozs
6th....Clive (Black Hydro)......... 78lbs 08ozs
7th....Chris Withall.................. 70lbs 00ozs
8th....Dave the Fish................ 65lbs 00ozs
9th....Darren (Badatfishing)...... 64lbs 00ozs
10th..RonB............................ 63lbs 00ozs
11th..Paul (nomorelongwalks)....57lbs 08ozs
12th..Terry (Wily) ................. 53lbs 00ozs
13th..Vince (vg1037).............. 52lbs 08ozs
14th..Colin the Pike................ 44lbs 08ozs
15th..Kevin the Catch............. 24lbs 00ozs
16th..Jessica......................... 21lbs 00ozs


All that remains is to say a BIG THANK YOU to Vince for organising the day, and all those that turned up to make it a most enjoyable day, I'm sure we'll be doing it all again in the not to distant future ;D.

[ridgeacre]

Another superb write up

[polepot]

Imagine you drawing the flier Pete

[madforit]

I fished sundays open at Cudmore, managed 49lb.
Danny had 63lb next peg to me. He's put me right for next sundays match.
All I've got to do now is to look in my takle room for somthing called a rod & a reel. ;D ;D

[oneabung]

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