Unfortunately this year I will be unable to fish all of the Marsh AC matches due to other commitments, so for this year I have asked if I can guest on the odd match that I am available for. The first of which was at Hartleylands Farm on Peartree Lake. I have never fished this lake on the complex before and had very little information to go on, but knew that Hartleylands responds to pellet, so armed myself with a mix of 4 and 6mm sinkers with a few 8mm hookers. I also prepared some 6mm expanders and took a couple of tins of my old favourite, corn.
Mick had volunteered to be my chauffeur for the day and due to the amount of time to get there it was an early start 0515 to be precise. Troy would follow us down. Stopping off at the Knoxbridge Café sorted us out with a couple of full English's and a brew.
With our belly's full it was only 10 minutes before we pulled into the car park on the venue. A few of the lads and I took on the duties of pegging it out with the idea of trying to give everyone a feature. The lake has two distinct islands and are reached quite easily with waggler or feeder tactics, so they were in along with a few decent looking margin pegs.
Back at the draw I was hoping for a peg in the high numbers, I had noticed fish in the area moving around and would settle for pegs 14 to 18. However it was not to be and peg 7 stuck to my mitt. The completely opposite bank from where I fancied, but as it was my first attempt at the lake, I would not know a good peg from a bad one. I did have one problem though. Mick was sat on the next peg, again, this must be the fourth match on the trot we have drawn next to each other, with Troy drawing peg 14.
I decided to set up the method to fish across the gap between the islands, giving it an hour before having a look on the pole. My pole lines were at 12.5m and 5m with a margin line to the left hand side.
After 40 minutes I was still biteless, a few twitches but no pulls. I was trailing both Tony and Mick who were catching slowly but steadily and I needed to change things. Placing the rod up the bank and getting the pole out saw a couple of liners long but still no fish. A switch to 5m feeding pellet and fishing corn over the top saw me catch my first fish after an hour, a 2lb common. By feeding small amounts of pellets regularly and fishing corn I was no getting a few fish at 5m and slowly hauling the gap back. After 3 hours I reckoned on having 40lb before this swim started to drop off. I re-fed the line with a pole cup mix of a dozen grains of corn and half pot of pellet and gave the 12.5m line another go. By pinging 6 pellets every 30 seconds I was now getting a few more fish to compensate for the 5m line being rested. It was not fast and furious but was steady, however, I noticed that if the bait was on the deck for too long I would have to wait for a bite. So I was regularly lifting and dropping the bait.
The Watkins brothers were both catching well and Clive was sneaking a few out. Mick had slowed up, Tony was still catching and Dave Collier was getting a few in the corner on maggot.
Hour 4 and 5 flew by with still odd fish coming to the net. I would get 3 or 4 before they dropped off, but by rotating the pole lines I could get fish coming. A couple of bonus 4lb fish on the 5m line were welcome. The last hour though seemed to switch off everywhere though. Tony was struggling, Mick was struggling and the only angler I saw catching was Simon, who had reverted to fishing the margin line. My margin line would only account for two small commons all day.
Overall
1st Simon Watkins 89-12
2nd Keith Ashby 81-00
3rd Tony Roberts 72-08
4th Clive Pritchard 69-08
5th Jim Boase 67-00
6th Tony Watkins 59-08
So second overall and a section win. Must admit I thought Tony had done me. Another MK Nugget in the bank to make it 5-0. It was also nice to have a pint afterwards with the chairman who recently celebrated his 65th birthday.
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