Marsh Angling Club

Last week I received a message from Dave Collier offering me a guest place for the Marsh AC match at Rockells farm

Rockells is a place I have wanted to fish for a long time as it throws big weights up and the fishing is my sort of fishing ie margin and top2 for big Carp what could be better

It's a fair drive from my place to Rockells it shows up at just over 2 hours on the sat nav but it's half way round the M25 and that road can be a nightmare at times the fishery is also in the middle of no where so hopefully the sat nav will get me there

I was up at 5.30am to load the car and set off at 6am as the draw wasn't till 8.30am that gave me two and a half hours to get there

The drive down was quite un-eventful and the sat nav took me straight there without a hitch and I pulled into the car park at just gone 8am seeing the lake for the first time it looked fantastic and well looked after and reminded me a lot of Court farm at Aldermaston with the mature trees and over hanging willows etc

The other Marsh anglers soon started arriving along with another 3 invited guests who were Al and Keith who I have fished with before and Keith's travelling partner Vic

Al brightened my day up as he had turned up in a nice white T shirt well it was when his wife sent him on his way this morning but unfortunately Al had stopped for an egg and bacon roll on the way down and in his hurry to eat it he didn't take the time to check it wasn't armed  and as usually happens in these situations the first bite detonated the egg and it exploded out the side and all over Al's white shirt leaving him with egg on his face and just about every where else too  which left poor Al the butt of a fair few jokes  still it kept us laughing till the draw

At the draw I pulled peg 10 out of the bag from all the information I had been able to gather about Rockells it appeared that the flyers were pegs 1,2 and 3 and the other pegs up at that end of the lake fished better too so 10 didn't seem to be such a good draw

But Vic told me that he had fished peg 10 a couple of years ago and had  200lb fishing the bush right next to the platform and that when he and Keith were pegging the lake this morning peg 10 was alive with fish

So I took off round to my peg with an expectant urgency

As I approached I could see a lot of fish all around the platform on peg 9 but when the guy that was fishing 9 arrived they soon disappeared but it was looking promising

Reading Peter's blog entry from last year I had already decided on my plan of attack today before I even left home and that was I intended to fish paste in the margins and feed pellet and hemp so I had 6 pints of 4mm Sketterings feed pellets 6 pints of hemp and 6 pints of paste

Following Vic's advice I decided to just concentrate on the bush in my right hand margin and set up a paste rig to fish tight into the bush and another to fish about 2 foot out from the bush were I had slightly deeper water I also set up an up in the water rig just in case the fish came up in the water

Once I had my rigs set up I found I had a bit of time on my hands and got tempted by the tree to my left so plumbed up a swim tight to the over hanging tree which was at 7m and decided to try that swim first to give the margin time to get going

Today is something a bit new for me as we are fishing for 3 hours then weighing in then fishing for another 3 hours so really it's going to be two 3 hour matches which will be a bit strange as I usually fish 5 hour matches

Terry setting up on peg 16

10am and Dave blew the whistle for the all in I put a pot of pellet and a pot of hemp under the bush and a pot of pellet out at 7m by the overhanging tree then went out on the 7m line with a 6mm soft hooker pellet on the hook as I was shipping out I could see Peter across the other side of the lake on peg 17 playing a fish already  I could also hear a lot of splashing coming from up above me around Dave's peg so it looked like the fish were having it

Well they weren't in my swim after about 10 min's I had my first bite and it was a dinky little pastie Carp that would struggle to make 4ozs  and to be honest it wasn't really much of a match for my red hydro I had a few more fish of the same size and I lost a lot that I bumped off I then managed to hook the tree and pulling it out my rig pinged back and tied itself in a thousand knots around the tip of my top kit  

This was turning into a nightmare  1/2 an hour gone and all had to show for my effort was about 1lb of fish in the net

I'd been feeding the bush all the time I was fishing the 7m swim and decided that now was the time to give it a go and catch some of these Rockell monsters

So on with a large lump of paste and I dropped it tight into the bush and sure enough no sooner had the float settled it dipped under and a 2oz pastie hurtled out of the water briefly attached to my red hydro as I struck  before it bumped off

From then on the day turned into a bit of a blur for me  the next thing I knew the whistle was blowing for the half way weigh in I had next to nothing in the net I had loosened off my elastic to try and stop bumping of these poxy little fish but through out the whole 3 hours I had only had 3 or 4 fish that needed netting all the rest I had swung in to hand  and if I'm honest I had no idea what sort of weight I had but reckoned I would be lucky to have 10lb

I set off round to help with the weigh in Peter had indeed had a good morning and lead the way right round the lake with 120lbs until we got round to pegs 1,2 and 3 where Keith put 148lbs on the scales followed by Vic with 133lbs the Martin took the lead with a fine 180lbs from peg 3

My weight turned out to be slightly better than I had expected but was still abysmal compared to some of the other weights as I only managed 22lbs

Having a mare in Essex

Peter getting ready for the afternoon session

back on my peg before the restart I removed my tangled rig from the top2

And plumbed up another swim in the margin tight to my left next to the brambles

And on the all in I fed both margin swims and then set off back on paste in the swim to my right and it was business as usual with 4 oz pastie Carp hitting the bait as soon as it settled and the only difference from this morning was that I was getting the same stamp of fish from the other margin too  and the day went all blurry again I did manage a few decent Carp of around 2lb in the last hour but the vast majority of fish again I could swing in  thankfully the whistle went and put an end to my misery

I'd had a better afternoon but still had next to nothing in the net compared to most of the people that I could see

I went round and helped with the weigh in but I must admit my heart wasn't really in it as there's nothing worse than weighing in loads of fish when you have had a right mare of a day

But Martin, Keith and Peter all had fantastic afternoons with 200lb+ weights in 3 hours and there were another 4 weights all over 100lb

I managed 52lb to give a total of 74lb for the day

Martin won the match with a fantastic 383lb  beating Keith who had 382lb by 1lb

Peter improved his personal best with a fine 330lb for 3rd place

1 strange thing is though usually when I've had a bad day on the way home or the days following you think about things you did wrong or things you should have tried but my visit to Rockells is all a bit of a blur

There just seem to be a lot of bad days this year

Anyone know how much a hand transplant costs ?

Anyway thanks to Dave and the guys and gals from Marsh AC for inviting me down for the day  and I look forward to next 1