TalkAngling

Saturday 21st June 2008

Back off down Rolfs today and after last weeks silver fish debacle I'm looking forward to it

I'm fishing with the guys and gals from the TalkAngling forum today I've fished with a few of them before and there will also be a few Jinx members fishing too so should be a good day

The only downer on the day is that after a few weeks of decent weather today is forecast to be a wash out - dull and rain all day but at least when that float goes down there's going to be something decent on the other end of it

I arrived nice and early to give my nets a good long soak in the net dip and caught up with John and had a look at some or the improvements he and Pauline have been making with the lake and I must say the lake is looking fantastic now  

One of John's latest projects is a huge standing stone that is going to be set at the back of Rolfs memorial garden

All he needs now is a group of mugs to help lift it up ...wonder where he's going to find them ?

Eventually everyone started to arrive all the usual suspects from the Jinx (with the exception of Malc who ruled himself out of the match with a rather poor car choice )and the guys from TalkAngling some I've met before and a few new ones too 

Chatting with Simple and Steve Wilson before the draw I said that I really fancied drawing peg 19 today as it's a peg I like fishing and now the lake had settled down after the floods of a few weeks ago I thought it would fish well

Well imagine my surprise when I opened my hand and peg 19 winked at me

A good omen or what

Your probably fed up with looking at photo's of peg 19 by now as I've drawn it a fair few times this year

But tuff luck I like it

No messing about today I'm fishing just 2 lines the first at 7m in front

And the second tight into the bush to my right at the back of the boat

Last time I was in peg 19 I couldn't get a bite from the bush and caught 173lb from the 7m line mainly on pellet

Steve Wilson was on peg 23 again the same peg he had the net problem on in the first Jinx match 

Peter Morton had drawn peg 24 and should be in for a few 

SimpleSimon was on peg 14 and hoping to repeat his double ton he had on his last visit to Rolfs 

And Dave Moore had peg 16

So it looked like the Jinxers were all up the top of the big lake today

On the whistle I shipped 2 pots of pellets out to 7m and went out over the top with a 6mm soft hooker pellet fished on the deck

The guy next to me on peg 20 went out to 13m fishing shallow for some reason a lot of people do that on peg 20 if I ever manage to draw it the bush to the left of the platform is getting 5 or 6 pots of pellets on the whistle and a handful after every fish

As you can tell not a lot was happening in my swim as I had a lot of time to day dream and muse about peg 20

I was expecting the float to bury as soon as it settled but I'd sat there for 30 min's without a bite not even an indication

Peter on peg 24 was into a fish every time I looked up fishing out to the bar on the feeder as was Dave M on peg 16 looks like today's going to be a feeder day

I did consider quickly setting up my feeder but with the guys on peg 22 and peg 18 chucking across the front of me it was bound to all end in tears and tangles so I plumped to give the margin swim a shot

30 min's later and with no interest from the bush I went back out to 7m with an hour gone and not a single bite things were starting to look bad after about 10 min's I had my first bite of the day an 8oz perch caught on sweetcorn and about an hour later I had my next fish this time an 8oz skimmer quickly followed by a 2oz Roach ( I was almost bagging ) but it didn't last after 3 hours all I had in the net was 3 fish which would struggle to make a pound between them

Peter on 24 was still catching on the feeder but Dave on peg 16 was now struggling like the rest of us 

A few people along the car park bank were making the odd trip to the scales and I noticed Simple on peg 14 sneaking the odd fish into his net

Then it happened the tip of the float just dibbed down and I lifted into it expecting it to be another skimmer but it went solid then my hydro shot out and at last I was into a fish after a quick battle I slid the net under a mirror Carp of about 6lb back out again with a 6mm cube of meat on the hook and was soon into another fish but this 1 just tore off towards the bush and the hook pulled back out again and instantly another fish but this 1 was foul hooked and by the feel of it the hook was in the tail and again the hook pulled after a brief battle

I swapped to a 10mm cube of meat and went back out to 7m after a bit of jiggling and lifting the float buried again but this time it was a skimmer that was getting on for 2lb back out with another 10mm cube and after a few min's I was into another of Rolfs finest and soon had another Carp of about 6lb in the net  So with 4 hours gone all I had to show were 2 Carp and a few lbs of silvers

But it looked as if the fish had finally arrived ( it's just a shame that the match started so early usually this time of year matches fish from 2 till 7 but we are doing 11 till 4  ) next put in I had an instant bite and this time a smaller fish of about 4lb then I started to get a few missed bites so I swapped back to the 6mm cube and this brought my best fish of the day a nice common of around 8lb I continued to catch right up till the whistle although I lost the last 3 fish I hooked the first by playing it too hard the second was a foul hooker and the last was a weird 1 that swam in towards me then just in front of the platform it stopped and everything went solid and somehow the crafty bugger had transfered the hook into a root of branch or something by the time I had got the rig back the whistle went

I packed my gear away and headed off round to help with the weigh in back in the car park I noticed John and Pauline standing over by the garden looking in to a hole and eventually curiosity got the best of me and I went over to look in too

eventually when enough people wandered over to the hole John suggested that we may like to help him plant his new rock

Man power got it in the hole

But un like the builders of stone henge we needed a Brummie with a BMW to stand it up

The finished result looks fantastic

Back to the weigh in pole killer on peg 34 set the early running with 94lb Justin Case on 36 soon took the lead with a fine 150lb and held on to the lead until we reached peg 7 where first peg put 193lb on the scales for a fine match win

I managed to weigh 71lb and managed to win the section just beating Simon on peg 14 by 3lb ( glad I kept them silvers now ) Peter on peg 24 weighed 161lb for a new pb match weight and won his section and came 2nd in the match well done Peter

Result

All in all not a fantastic days fishing by Rolfs standards but compared to last weekend it was 100 times better

Maggotdrowners Individual Championships 2008

Saturday 14th June 2008

Well it's the Md's individual championships today and if I'm totally honest I'm not looking forward to it at all

The match was originally booked for Larford match lake which I was looking forward to but the match was swapped to Moland mere at Packington Somers fishery

Information was a bit scarce about the place but it appeared they had a lot of problems with fish deaths last year and judging by the results from matches it was a very peggy venue with low backing weights

About 2 weeks ago rumours started to appear suggesting that dead Carp were being found in the margins at Packington Somers again and that all matches were now silver fish only and last week our match was officially made a sliver fish only match meaning if you caught a Carp you had to put it back

Well that's me lost interest straight away I'd rather put my balls through a mangle than intentionally fish a commercial fishery for silvers

But as I'd already paid for the day I decided to fish the match if nothing else it will be a fun day out with the other Maggotdrowners and the proceeds from the day would be going to charity so it won't be a total loss

I had a good drive up to the venue just under 1 hour 45 mins and thanks to my TomTom I got there with no problems as I pulled up outside the cafe/tackle shop I saw Peter washing his nets in the dip and soon had my nets washed and out to dry

Vince arrived and we went in to get some breakfast all the usual suspects started to arrive with a few new ones too

Bucko's good lady came round selling raffle tickets as after the match Vince has arranged for a buffet with the prize giving and a raffle

Draw time arrived and I pulled peg 56 out of the bag

I good thing about this venue is that you can park right behind your peg

So no long walk today

The peg looked quite nice with a patch of lilies on the far bank

I almost got excited for a moment until the guy on the next peg told me that we were on the wrong side of the lake and would struggle doh!

I started off casting a groundbait feeder across to the lilies with a worm on the hook but all I could catch were tiny Perch In fact they were so small they couldn't get the hook in their mouths and the worm had them in a neck lock

After an hour of trying worm , caster , maggot , corn , Pellet and meat and all combinations there of I gave up on the far bank and all I had to show for my efforts were about 20 little fish that would struggle to make 8oz between them

I spent a couple of hours fishing the pole at 11.5m and also at 6m and between both lines never had 1 bite on any bait

I had been feeding the margin all match with maggot

And first put in I had my best fish of the day a 4oz skimmer I just stuck it out for the rest of the match fishing the top 2 with maggot catching the odd little Roach and skimmers luckily before I lost the will to live Vince blew the whistle and it was over

Another good thing about this venue is that they run a good weighing in system and in no time they arrived at my peg and I managed to put 2lb on the scales for what I imagined would be last place as most people seemed to have had 5lb - 10lb ish with some better weights coming from the other side of the lake it was even suggested that Vince had done well

Back up at the cafe for the results and a plate of food from the buffet

The match was won by Missabite with 43lb Matt Nutt was 2nd with 40lb Mike Globe was 3rd with 38lb and Vince came in 4th with 29lb

The top 3 all won new seat boxes donated by Jim burton from MatchBox and there were also new reels donated by The Matchmen for the section winners

As for me I managed to come 3rd from last seems a couple of people had a worse day than me

And to make my day even worse there must have been more than 40 raffle prizes on the table and even with 5 strips of tickets I didn't manage to win 1 prize

Still the raffle raised £224 for the charities which were the Kent Air Ambulance and Great Ormond Street Hospital

All in all not a good days fishing saying that it's a lovely venue well looked after and well run it just ain't got enough fish in it!

But it was good to meet up with the Maggotdrowners again hopefully next year will be better

Jinx series

 The Jinx Series 2008

Match 2

Well its match 2 of the Jinx series this week back down at Rolfs lake in Oxfordshire

With the torrential rain mid week Oxfordshire suffered probably more than most and by Wednesday evening the stream behind Rolfs lake had flooded the field behind pegs 19 and 20 and had breached the bank it also breached behind peg 38 and again behind peg 4 this had the effect of raising the lake level by about 6ft and at 1 point the water was almost into the car park  the boat which usually sits next to peg 19 ended up next to the fence behind peg 18

The fish also took this opportunity to spawn and were all in the grass behind pegs 15 right through to peg 20 making whoopee!

By Friday John Bennett had got the levels down with the pumps and was starting to drop the lake level

Malc offered his, Gemma's, Dai's and Mitch's help to get the fish back in the lake so they all arrived on Friday and spent the day giving John and Pauline a hand to get the lake back in order

By the time we all arrived on Saturday the lake was still high and the water was well over the platforms but it was at least fishable the fish appeared to have their minds on other things though and were up on the banks and the submerged platforms making luv

The general opinion was that it was going to fish very hard and we could be in for a gruller from my experience when the lake floods from behind pegs 19 and 20 it colours the water and the fish follow the coloured water down into the small lake and the top of the main lake fishes hard so I fancied either drawing peg 30 or 32 or any where in the small lake but as the stream also breached into the small lake who knows what will happen

As is usual my drawing hand was working on a totally different game plan to the rest of me and I was soon trekking round past pegs 30 and 32 right round the little lake up to the top of the big lake with peg 16 as my final destination  in all honesty if I didn't need the hand to drive home I would have chopped it off and buried it round by peg 16

To make matters even worse peg 16 was in the same section as the pegs on the car park bank  the only good thing was that pegs 17 and 18 were un fishable

So at least I was on the end peg

For company on the motorway bank I had Mitch on peg 13 Mugger Morton on 14 and Nick Williams next to me on 15

And opposite on peg 22 the same peg he had last match was Kev who didn't look too happy at the prospect as he had a bad day there last match

On peg 23 was Ant

And on 24 was a man that it has to be said was a tad too overjoyed with his draw but with another ton on the cards Paul Roberts looked eager to get amongst them

Roy was on peg 28

And Dave had peg 30

And down on peg 32 was the Jinx himself Malc

My plan of attack today was going to be 2 main lines

First at 11.5m straight out in front

And the second on the bush to my left

And I also set up the feeder rod to chuck out to the middle in the hope of mugging a few fish at the all in

But a lot of the fish were cruising about on the surface so they may not feed on the deck so I also set up a rig to fish shallow

At the all in I put a pot of pellets out at 11.5m and another next to the bush to my left then cast the feeder out to the middle with a white choco boilie on

Straight away Ant on peg 23 was into a fish on the pellet waggler soon followed by Paul on 24 I gave it 20 mins on the feeder but had no bites at all Nick next to me on 15 had had a fish fishing shallow at 13m Ant and Paul were still catching fish on the pellet waggler

So I decided to give the 11.5m line a try I put a 6mm pellet on the hook and shipped it out to 11.5m to fish on the deck I was instantly pestered by small fish so I swapped to a grain of corn and after a bit of lifting and jiggling I had my first fish of the day a nice common around 4lb

Nick on peg 15 had a couple of weighers around 12lb and was starting to get a few fish lined up shallow now and by the look of it Ant and Paul were starting to struggle now

I went back out with another grain of corn on the hook and after about 10 min's had another fish this time about 6lb but I could see that my float was getting dragged about a fair bit by line bites so the fish must be up in the water so I swapped to my shallow rig I couldn't get any interest with pellet on the hook and corn only brought an un wanted Roach but a swap to a cube of meat brought an instant response from a Carp of about 6lb for the next 2 hours I fished meat on the hook and fed about 10 4mm pellets every 20secs and was starting to get a few fish I reckoned I had caught Nick up now but Paul Roberts on peg 24 had swapped to fishing in the margins and was getting a few fish a lot of which appeared to be weighers Ant was still struggling and Kev on peg 22 was now making regular trips to the scales with weighers

My 11.5m line started to slow down with longer weights between bites so I decided to try the inside line on the bush to my left first put in I had a Carp of about 4lb on a grain of corn then the next I had a fish that tore off up towards peg 20 at a great rate of knots bottomed out my red hydro and eventually snapped me up and for the first time ever at Rolfs I lost the complete rig it went at the knot on the loop that connects to the crows foot usually the hook straightens out or just pulls not often you see .20mm line go

With only an hour to go I decided to just stick it out fishing shallow at 11.5m from what I could see the only person in my section I had any chance of beating was Ant who had all but given up now but everyone else was up and down to the scales like jack in boxes

I noticed out of the corner of my eye Nick on peg 15 was jumping around a bit then I saw his top 4 floating off out into the middle of the lake tip up like the Titanic and slide under He was in 2 minds wether to dive in to get it before it went down but eventually decided to let it go  but on thinking about it Nick is no match for 1 of Rolf Carp even if it is towing a top 4 behind it  so probably the right decision

I had a few more fish before the whistle and the last 1 was my best fish of the day and also my first weigher at 9lb 12oz

I reckoned I had about 100lb which would put me no where in the section

As I was packing up Peter Morton Came up to weigh a fish he had mugged at the whistle

A nice common at 11lb 8oz

I soon had all my gear packed away and back in the car and headed of round to help with the weigh in

Kevin was first to weigh in on peg 22 and put 136lb on the scales for his best ever match weight

Ant on peg 23 had a nightmare of a match and only managed 68lb then Paul Roberts on peg 24 after finally reaching the magical ton last match upped it to 150lb this match and the last person in my section was Roy on peg 28 and he too achieved another personal best with 177lb so it was looking like I would end up 4th in section but I'm last to weigh so it will some time before I find out as it appears the lake has fished it nuts off

The next 4 pegs all returned weights over a ton with even Malc getting in on the action with 154lb from peg 32

Poor old Gemma had a bad match on peg 38 and only managed 23lb  looks like Team Minx may take a battering this week

The end of the little lake pegs 40 and 2 had fished best of all with Slim on 40 putting 206lb on the scales for his 2nd double ton in 2 matches  but it was only good enough for 2nd place today as Simon on peg 2 had fished a blinder putting 221lb on the scales for a new personal best and a fine match win

With a few more 100lb+ weights round the motorway bank we finally arrived at peg 16 Nick on 15 had weighed 100lb so I was hoping to be close to that but after the final total I managed 121lb

Result