At last a blog entry!!!

Sorry for the long delay in writing an entry have been busy and not had time or the inspiration lately.

I have however managed to fish a few matches with some mixed results.

First off I had the Maggotdrowners Southern champs down the Reservoir at Hartleylands. This can be a prolific lake with ton up nets all round. It is a bit of a unlucky venue for me as the few times I have fished it over the years have never managed to win a match at the lake apart from a silverfish only event last year. Although I have been trying to win a match using tares so this could be one of the reasons for my lack of results! This is because one day I sat there and landed 45 carp for over 200lb on the bait.

So I turned up again with several pints of tares for one last try and not surprisingly I failed again. Fished on the deck at about 4 meters I did however manage 49lb of mostly carp on the bait but have now resigned myself that I will never win a carp match with tares and have given up. The match was won by Bill Gibbins with a very good weight of 147lb on paste, Matt love was 2nd using the waggler fished deep shallow with around 100lb.

Next match was the Dave Pankhutst Memorial match down the River Medway at Barming, About 30 turned up to fish this match. Just lately the draw bag has deserted me a bit and I pulled out one of the pegs I didn’t really want. It was just downstream of the bridge and has a big bank of weed that goes out making it difficult to fish. Add to that a howling downstream wind and I was going to struggle to hold the pole or fish the waggler effectively.

I set up a 13 ft feeder rod and decided to chance it and go all out for bream. I wasn’t in the best area for them but the prospects of fighting the pole in the wind for 5 hours didn’t really appeal to me. At the off a medium caged feeder was lobbed out towards the far side baited with worm. Unbelievably within 5 minutes the tip went round and I was into a bream. I landed a fish of about 2lb and it was soon followed by another 2 of its mates. 20 minutes in and I had 3 bream already.

Unfortunately shortly after a large boat went over the top of the swim and must have spooked the shoal as it went dead. For the reminder of the match I just picked up the odd small fish. I did have a short spell on the waggler but it was impossible in the strong wind and I gave up.

At the end the scales eventually come round and I put 7lb odd on the scales which was good enough for the section win picking up £40 and 5th overall in the match. I narrowly missed out on 4th spot by 1oz.

The next weekend I was off to fish the Southern Intersite match at Monk lakes, which is a team event between 4 angling forums.

I pulled out peg 3 on Lake 1 which wasn’t too bad a draw and was expecting a decent weight. I did my usual of balling in some groundbait at the start hoping to draw lots of carp in so I can feed them up shallow but today it just didn’t work! I ended up for the first part of the match fishing an 8mm hard pellet on the deck to pick off the odd carp eventually that died too and I was left with just over a hour of the match left and only roughly 20lb in the net.

Desperate to add to my weight I dug out a pint of maggots I had in the bag and quickly set up the waggler to fish maggots on the drop. Spraying out maggots at 20 meters I started to pick up small chub and the odd carp mixed in. It was a fish a chuck for the last hour and I was cursing myself for being lazy and not setting the rod up sooner.

I ended up with 37lb for a section 2nd beating the guys either side of me. 49 lb won the section. The whole lake fished poor for some reason and 87lb won the lake. Some weighed in less than 10lb!

Full result of the match is.

Section 1


2 Jeff Driscoll TA 21-04
3 Nick Gilbert MD 37-00
5 Andy Gregory TF 15-05
7 Dave Pearson AF 49-01

Section 2


9 M Wright TA 6-08
11 Gary Thorpe MD 7-10
13 Lindsay Scott TF 19-00
15 Mark Hathaway AF 17-10


Section 3


17 Paul Law TA 36-10
19 Matt Love MD 48-08
21 Johnny Beaton TF 28-10
22 Mark Smith AF 63-06

Section 4


23 Ron Byus TA 42-00
24 Matt Nutt MD 48-08
26 Chris Martin TF 86-00
28 T Curd AF 62-08

Section 5


30 Lance Glover TA 21-08
32 Bill Gibbins MD 23-00
34 Tim Suttle TF 26-08
36 R Graves AF 58-04

Section 6


38 Frank Wright TA 8-08
40 Clive Pritchard MD 55-02
42 Colin Forsdyke TF 76-04
44 J Holt AF 66-08

Section 7


92 Fred Parker TA 108-08
94 Vince Gould MD 34-10
96 Russell Grimes TF 77-12
98 J Swann AF 66-00

Section 8


100 R Lucas TA 47-08
104 Paul East MD 50-00
106 Dave A T TF 94-04
108 M Page AF 61-04

Section 9


110 Del Smith TA 45-00
112 Peter Morton MD 85-04
113 Ant Sparrow TF 88-00
115 Dave Churchward AF 147-04

Section 10


117 I Hornby TA 106-12
119 Trevor Little MD 112-00
121 No Angler TF 0-00
123 Stu Wilson AF 117-08



Overall Team Result


Angling Forums....... 34
Total Fishing....... 27
Maggotdrowning.com..... 21
Talk Angling...... 17