Todber manor Saturday open

Travelled down with with Jason again today, and decided to try poppins cafe in Gillingham, especially after last week's rubbish in waitrose, it opens at 8 on a Saturday, which is just right for a 9o,clock draw, and I must say it was very nice , all the food was freshly cooked and the place was very clean and bright with friendly staff, so a 4.25 from me, and I will go back.

Onto the fishery , getting there about 15 mins before the draw, so plenty of time to accept Nigel Sanders side bet for 2 quid, a pound on silver,s and one on carp, due to the fishery forecast for gales I had intended to give the silvers a go if I drew a peg where the wind would make it all but impossible to fish the pole or waggler for carp, into the bucket and out comes peg 56, nice , wind off my back,

so I thought I may get a few carp on the 13 mtr line on banded  pellet , as I did last week on 58. So a .5g  rig was put together for that, also I made up a silver,s rig for 2+2 for caster or maggot over groundbait. At the start i cupped in some 4,s at 13mtrs, and 3 balls of groundbait on the short line, I decided to go straight out on the pellet line , hoping it was going to be the same as last week, and I was soon attached to a feisty 4lb ghostie, next put in and I was briefly foul hooked into another carp, and that was my lot on that line,
So I came back into the short line and caught straight away, on caster or maggot, I did get a 2lb  skimmer from here but it was my only one from there, I was catching small roach (2oz) virtually every put in, but it was going to be to slow, especially as I could see gary(the mighty atom) o,Shea on 52 catching roach of a slightly better stamp than me, so 90mins in I got off my box and made up a .4g drennan float with a bulk and two droppers to fish a topset to hand, as I thought these small roach wouldn't mind coming up the shelf a bit, so I plumbed up and found about a mtr of water and began feeding caster,

And I fished it for virtually the rest of the match, I did keep trying the long pellet line just to make sure I got both pounds off Nigel as I could see he was struggling to cope with the wind over on 36, tough life.
I had a nice day catching some lovely roach up to 12oz , three 1lb skimmers and a perch of about the same size, so by the end I was fairly confident of winning the silvers, as gary had also struggled with the wind and tow, I reckoned I had about 30lb of silvers and was amazingly close for me as the net went 30.10 and my 5 small carp went 13.2, for a 43.12 total.

 So into the king of the manor silver,s final it is then, the match was won by Pete boothby on 60 with 66.1 . Weigh sheets below.

Next match is scheduled to be next Sunday for the Landsend league, but if anyone can't make the last round of the Todber manor silver,s league next Saturday, get in touch, I will gladly pay your pools back to you as I know they have already been paid.
Well that's it for another year, happy New year to you all from Judith and me ,and we  hope to see you all on the bank next year.

Todber manor open

Decided to go to todber today, took Jason Radford with me , so as I didn't have to buy my own breakfast, lol.
We went into waitrose in Gillingham for breakfast as I was told they had a cafe which did breakfast, WRONG, rolls only, and I was disappointed cos the rolls were crap, so only a 2 , just glad I never paid for it.
Got to the fishery with plenty of time , and was surprised to see fishery owner John actually giving something away, well it was only chocolate.
Only 15 fishing so John put ever other peg in on ash, and 49 to 60 on hillview, into the draw tin and out comes 58, that's ok then, wind off my back aswell.

Good to see the fishery now has a gravel path to every swim, no more mud , yay.
So today I set a waggler to fish banded pellet on the deck about 3/4 towards the far bank, and one pole rig again to fish hard pellet on the deck at 13/14 mtrs.
I started on the pole with banded 6mm pellet after cupping some hard 4,s in, and feeding some out on the wag line.
I soon started getting bites and putting a few small carp in the net,

I should have stuck with it , but I couldn't resist chucking the wag out, I had a carp quickly , which made me stick with it , but that was my only bite in 20 mins, back on the pole and it was never the same , golden rule, never leave feeding fish, especially this time of year. So it was a case of scratching around till the end, I did have another spell on the wag and managed three more, and a few more odd ones on the pole , by the end I thought I was about third on the lake as Pete neate over on 53 had caught well on the pole and Pete booths on 51 had a steady match on the method, when the scales got to me Pete was winning with 70lb and Pete had 46, I had 37lb on my clicker so I wasn't confident, but I got that wrong as my net went 50lb exactly, doh.
So second on the lake and a pickup then.
Weigh sheets below.

No more fishing now till next Saturday, then it's back down to todber again for another open,
Apart from that we hope you all have a really good Christmas, all the best from Judith and me.

Double header Xmas matches

The first Xmas match of the weekend saw me and Judith heading south for the todber manor extravaganza, a stop off at cannards was a bit disappointing, so only a three on the rating for that one.
Got to the fishery in plenty of time to enjoy the free hospitality laid on by John and his crew, the mince pies were nice , but he asked me not to rate the coffee, (lol). Good to meet up with some people I haven't seen in a while, which is always good.
With nearly 80 fishing I wasn't to worried where I drew , but I did fancy a go on whitepost, only as I have never fished it before and there are some match winning pegs on the two lakes, I sent Judith into the melee which was the draw queue, and it took her a while to get out, and she reappeared no where near where she entered the queue looking a tad disshevelled.
I opened it up to see peg 20, white post bottom lake , happy with that, but I was informed by several locals I was a couple of pegs out as I was just as the lake narrows , further on there are some old weedbeds which the fish like at this time of year, the walk down to the peg was hard ,(by commercial fishery standards) , down hill through a soft mud spot which sucked the trolley down to the axle, so after a bit of huffing and puffing I got to the swim, with Judith giving me an earbashing as we would be sat in the shade all day, excuse me but I never drew it.

It looked ok to me, but our very own elf on the shelf, Gary o,Shea who was on the start of the good pegs said me and the people to my right would really struggle, but you never know.
Two rigs today, .2g for maggot in a couple of areas, one across at 13 mtrs at the bottom of the far shelf, same rig for of to the right at 16 mtrs, and a dobbing rig for across,  well to be honest it was a very quiet 5 hours , as I was informed it may be, I had my first bite after 30 minutes which was a pretty koi of about 1 1/2 lb (10.30).

Next bite as 8lb mirror at 11.45, both these fish came from the right had 16 mtr line, then I had to wait till the last 30 minutes for three more bites and three more carp in the net, ending up with 23lb, for no good, the lake was won further up as expected with "smiling" John fuidge doing well with 70lb of corn caught fish, then that naughty elf Gary o,Shea was second on the lake with 60lb. Well done to them. To my right there was only three fish caught between the for anglers, including venue professional, Nigel Sanders on the end peg, I decided to walk the other way back to avoid the mud pit, got that wrong, it was a long slippery walk up hill to the Carpark, Terry leney came and gave me pull lol.
Getting back to the results it turned out John came second on the day being beaten dynamic Jamie parkhouse on peg 90 (homeground) winning with 71lb, well done matey.
John was second, Gary third and Vince Brown was fourth off 48 hillview with just over 50lb,
As expected from John and his crew at the fishery it was a well run match with a prize for everyone, so well done to them,
Onto Sunday and it was clevedon Xmas match being held on the paddock lake at acorn fishery, breakfast and draw was in the bridge inn at yatton, nice to have it in the dry and warm, but they seemed a bit understaffed and the breakfast suffered a bit, (3), got into the draw and pulled out peg 9 on the road side,

nice short walk after yesterday's comp, only an out 10 mtrs, good peg at times but a bit narrow for my liking, only 11 mtrs wide, but you never know (again). I won't take to long writing this as I ended up with the same as yesterday, 23lb, one f1, 4 carp , a skimmer and a roach, which was enough to pick up the 50 quid section money, much to Chris Fox,s annoyance as two of my carp were fouled, and his three went 21 1/2 lb (unlucky), the match was won by Ivan Currie on peg 6 with 71lb catching on dobbed bread by the bridge , as was second and third, 66lb and 60lb, I didn't get the weigh sheets for either match, sorry about that, ivans angle blog will probably have today's sheets.
Again the match was well run with a prize for everyone , so a big well done to the committee and helpers of the clevedon club,
It's good to see two well run matches and well supported aswell,

Viaduct silver's league, final round

I needed to win my section in this last match to stand any chance of getting into the overall league placing, and then it was going to rely on people above me having a slipup,
Stopped off at cannards for breakfast, and it wasn't to bad , a 4 without a doubt. Got my times wrong nd arrived at the fishery with an hour to spare, doh, could have had an extra 30 mins in bed, but it probably wouldn't have happened as Judith was up early as she was judging the large munsterlander group at the LKA  dog show at the NEC, but the weather men got there act together and managed to predict the right forecast, fairplay she got as far as the Tewkesbury junction before she had to turn round and come home, the snow was to bad, well Lauren did as she was driving, Judith was gutted as its quite a prestigious show, and she had a good number of dogs looked in, but as it turned out only about 30 percent turned up.
Any way back to viaduct and with winds blue to be blowing at 50mph  at the start of the match, a nice draw with the wind from behind would be nice, first into the draw tin and out comes 99 on Cary, a good peg but today the mind was coming from the left, and as many of you may know there is a big willow tree on the edge of the lake behind and to the left, and by big I mean over 50 foot, I wasn't to happy to be sitting under as these willows can shed branches at any time, but the wind which was certainly approaching over 40mph was making some big branches bend over above my head, so a quick call to Steve long and he agreed that I could move two pegs to my right onto 97 and o it of harm's way, I also checked with the other people in my section and the were happy for me to do it, I think this is the first time I have ever moved swims I my angling career. But it was dodgy .

This was only possible as two people to my right both drew and decided not to fish, which I find surprising as these are some of the most consistent pegs on the lake, and the wind was going to ease during the day, thanks lads.
With it so rough. , I didn't set up to much kit as it was to rough and I was a bit late getting myself sorted .
So a feeder was put together and one pole rig a .6g wire stem for when the wind dropped (hopefully) during the day.
At the start I just managed to cup in two balls of groundbait at 13 mtrs , and only just mind, then began on the feeder, I think I fished at about 25 mtrs for the first45 minutes, then with the wind showing signs of I forced to pole out, and began to get bites straightaway from small roach and occasional small skimmers, but tags the match went on , the roach disappeared and the 4/5 the pound skimmers turned up, and I had a nice steady match, topping up with occasional balls of groundbait laced with a few casters, single maggot was the best bait and a double bulk approach worked best with most of the fish giving proper sexy lift bites.
By the end I thought I had possibly 15lb but was a little surprised to see the scales go round to 18lb exactly and the needed section win, with ten pounds being second, Nigel Easton on peg 105, and he was one of the people I need to have a slipup.
There was a tie for first place on the day with both nick(I've only just got 15lb)ewers on 77 with 24.8 and Vince (I've got about 25lb)Brown on 59 also with 24.8.

 Nick (can't lie straight in bed) ewers with his 15 lb and below Vince with his 25 lb. Lol.

 I was surprised to find my 18lb was good enough for third on the day, but as you will see from the overall part of the league below it was a close Finnish, with 5 of us on 9points but with the count back on points and weight I managed 7th , first out of the money, it was very close, I lost a big perch on match 5 on 119 which if I had landed it would have put me second in the section, meaning I would have ended up on 7 points , it can be a fine line line sometimes, but then again others above me have probably done something similar, so I doesn't matter, but perch are buggers for dropping off small hooks .

 Top 5 below are Steve Jackson, John (smiler) fuidge, Craig (trig) Edmunds, Gary (lofty) o,Shea and Nigel Easton, well done to all.

Shame about the stayaways today as empty pegs can affect leagues massively with anglers getting points (me today lol) where they may not have ordinarily done so .

Landsend league rnd 1

Firstly Saturday, Judith myself and my youngest son James went up to Saul junction on the Gloucester canal to try and catch some perch on plastics, well another epic fail really, James had two small one while Judith and me both blanked, we dropped back onto Bristol docks on the way home, where we all blanked, oh well. But Judith was doing her best penguin impression with her hand me down clothes,

Onto Sunday and it was the first round of the Landsend fishery winter league , run by cosmic Ken rayner, a thankless job but he does well, he managed to get 27 to fish so we were spread over the three lakes, 9 on each, to much room really, another couple on each lake would have been nice, but its a busy match calendar, so always was going to be difficult to fill it.
Di,s normal tasty breakfast was consumed and it was straight into the draw bucket, out comes peg 28, far bank of the speci lake, my closest neighbours were Alan oram on 25 and Dale housen on 31, so as I said earlier a little to much room really, and opposite was the now less ample form of Steve.Sewell on 36, Russ peck trundled past me on his way to corner peg 32, which I did fancy.
Back to my swim and it can be ok, its a full 16 mtrs to the far bank, so a hard day could be on the cards,

Rigs today were one for on top of the island shelf in about 2 feet of water, but I didn't hold out much hope for this as it was very clear, another for hard pellet in a couple of spots down the island shelf, a meat rig to fish in front of the empty pallets each side, and a silver's rig for caster at 5 mtrs.
At the start up fed all lines with the relevant baits, except tight to the island, just to see if I could tempt and early mug fish, dobbing white maggot around, as bread is not allowed, after a fruitless 30 minutes of doing this along the far bank, that was binned never to be used again, came down the island shelf on the banded pellet rig, that was nearly as bad but I did manage a couple of small roach on the pellet, never a good sign, so 90 minutes in and very little to show for my efforts, I picked up the silver's rig, and never really put it down except for a few more tries on the pellet rig across, but again only roach bites to show for waving 16 mtrs about, also a look down towards each side empty pallets, but nothing to show for that either, I had a nice few hours fishing , catching roach from a couple of ounces to about 8oz on single caster on the deck at 5 mtrs, most enjoyable. I could also catch the same way across at the bottom of the island shelf, but it was taking to long, so I stuck with the short line, especially as no one seemed to be catching much in the way of silver's, a few better skimmers were coming out, but not enough to trouble what I was doing, probably to clear, Russ peck on peg 32 seemed to be doing the best with several carp and Steve Sewell had three and lost a few, also Mike duckett on 34 had three by the end but his were smaller than Steve's, of what I could hear the other lakes were fishing worse than our lake, on the all out I had a look in my net and thought I had at least 15lb, so it was a surprise when the scales went round to 21 lb , apart from two small hybrids a couple Rudd , it was all roach, made for a pleasant day, and a better than expected start to the league, winning the silver's and coming 4 th on the lake, by no means a disaster when I saw the weigh sheets for the other lakes, Russ peck won the lake and was top on the day with 69lb.

As I said the other lakes fished even harder as the weigh sheets below will show, but it seems as though the fish over the most of the country have switched off.

Not a good weekend

Landsend was the opener this weekend , and after di,s normal excellent breakfast it was into the draw, at first only 11 were fishing, then a blast from the past, Steve (cheesy) Collins arrived, so peg 3 went back into the draw, and yes I go and draw it , I've  drawn I that often I have carved my initials into the pallet, a draw farther up the lake with a bit if shelter from the cold westerly Gale which was funnelling down the lake would have been nice, but its not to be.

 It turned out this was not the side of the lake to be on , or this end as most fish were caught and lost from peg 11 down to 24, not brilliant weights but fully expected with the cold snap, Steve Collins won from 21, and second and third were on his right, and rod wootten on peg 5 won the livers with 9lb of invidious silver's, well f1,s to be precise , lol.
I ended up with 3 carp and a few bits for 14lb ,so that's my.lot for Saturday, weigh sheet below.

Now onto Sunday and round 5 of the viaduct silver's league, went with Chris Fox and Judith today, and Chris,s wife Caroline cooked us a splendid breakfast, bubbly.
Got to the fishery with time to spare so plenty of time for a chat, got into the draw queue early and pull out 119 again, same peg as last time, managed 2nd in the section last time with the help of a few bonus fish, so hoped for pretty much the same today, but it wasn't to be , so I'm not going to bruise my finger tips with to much righting, I ended up with 3.5 , of one perch and some small roach , it was dire, the whole section fished carp with 9lb winning it and 4lb coming second, I did lose a good perch from the right hand margin, but they just drop off sometimes for no apparent reason, didn't hang around for the results , but the weigh sheets will be on the viaduct face ache page or I'm sure Mike Nicholls will have them on his blog, but I think only 20lb won the whole match, from lodge lake, Craig Edmunds drew the same peg as last match which he won , he never won his day today but won his section with 18, narrowly winning his section, well not to narrow as 3lb was second, so he is still winning the league, and avoiding something drastic, looks set to win another series, fairplay to him.

So after last weekend success, it was down to earth with a bump, I don't thick I just hit the earth with a bump ,I think I missed it completely and fell off the planet, never mind there's always next week, Landsend winter league starts next week, can't wait, I think Ken rayner still has a couple of spaces, so contact him for details on 07768325552, or ring me in veals on 01179 260790 .

Todber manor pairs series, final match

Last round of this popular well run series, so after a nice breakfast with Ken (cosmic pb) rayner we trundled down to the fishery, we were third in the league going into this match but only a point behind the leaders , the two marks, poppleton and wynne, and behind Alan oram and Andy Lloyd on weight, so all to play for.
Into the draw and I wanted to miss the 30,s in the section, only just managed it pulling out 41, not moaning as I had an island fairly close , 30 mtrs so options for a waggler, left my lead rod at home.
For company I had the ivy house sick note Andy Lloyd on 40 and John Gray on form peg 43. So wag sorted and two pole rigs , both to fish at 13 mtrs , one for banded pellet and the other to fish maggot over the same line, where I would be feeding 4mm hard pellet, and all the time feeding some hard 6,s in the deep water away from the island.

At the start I began on the pole at 13 mtrs on banded 6mm pellets over potted 4,s, it took a while to hook a fish, which came off , as did the next one, John to my right caught straight away on the long pole and Andy to my left began on the wag over towards the island, and soon had a couple in the net, then I had a couple but I was still behind the anglers either side, by the end of the first hour, so I tried the wag as Andy was getting plenty of indications, I had a couple of fish quite quickly on banded 8mm pellet over the sixes, but I felt it was all wrong fishing in the deep water especially as Andy seemed to be catching in about 3 foot of water, so I stopped 're plumbed to find about 3foot, and was surprised to find the island shelf came off a long way, so I was probably about 20 foot off the island to find 3 to 3 1/2 foot of water, and that was where I spent the remainder of the match, getting plenty of indications and catching share as far as the section was going, as the match progressed it was clear that John Gray was going to win the section, and it was likely to be between me and Alex Murray for second in the section, who was also catching on the wag . As expected John won the section and was top weight on the day with 84lb ,I was second with 63lb and Alex third with 59, so second in the section was a good result , I packed my gear away and drove round to home ground lake where Ken was on the lake flyer, peg 90 to find he had come second in the section aswell, and with Andy Lloyd slipping to 6 th in his section so we over took that pairing, and when Mark wynne surprisingly came last but one in his section me and Ken came out on top, well happy with that , so well done Ken, good to see you tried a bit harder than last year LOL
So
Ken rayner , Tony rixon 24 points
Alan oram , Andy Lloyd 27 points
Mark wynne , Mark poppleton 29 points
Tom mangnal, Bob gullick 33.5 points
Steve Tucker , Gary o,Shea 35 points
So a good weekend for me , ending up 575 quid better off,
Today's weigh sheets below

Well done Mark for running the series, I know how hard and frustrating doing these things can be , hopefully he will do it again next year, ably assisted by cosmic Ken rayner.