Round 5. Windmill Lake. Manor Farm Leisure.
Saturday 12th August 2006.
Climbing into the car to set off on the 120+ mile trip it was lashing down, Proper
Jinx Series weather for a change. I stopped off in Battersea for breakfast as usual, and by the time I reached the M40 the rain had stopped.
I arrived at Manor Farm around 11am to find Me(simon) already in attendance having had a stroll round Windmill Lake.
Time for a cuppa and a cheeseburger .
Keith arrived with David and the obligatory photo's of his new granddaughter
Yes that's right, just in case you didn't know Keith is now a Granddad.
As the rest arrived we took a stroll round ourselves. Windmill is the most established of the lakes on the complex with a couple of islands and features to fish to in most pegs and a good spread of depths from 5-12 feet. However it was very obvious that there was a fair bit of water missing with all the pegs short of the water!!! the level must be about 3 feet down on normal .
The draw as ever on
Jinx matches was late as Malc rolled in past noon and went to peg out as with only 20 of us fishing we could leave out a few tight pegs. At least you can park behind or close to the majority of pegs so it's not to much of a struggle.
I ended up with peg 8 with Royst on peg7 to my left for company and Eric (ejayar) next down on peg 6. To my right on peg 9??? None other than
THE JINX himself .
The all in came at 1·30 pm and I was nowhere near ready having made a complete mess of trying to set up a pellet waggler, putting the line through the legs on one eye and then having corrected that finding a wind-knot in the line . Other rigs were just a top2 and a top3 as there was plenty of water straight in front. Grey skies held a promise of rain and a blustery wind threatened to make presentation difficult for those on the more exposed pegs. At least we could set up close to the water on our side, while opposite they had to set up on their platforms as can be seen by this photo....
Really the fishing was reasonably simple feeding 4mm pellet and fishing paste soon started producing pasty sized carp, much to Malc's disgust as he doesn't count these as real fish .
Royst was to be heard beating himself up on the next peg as he struggled to get to grips with trying to fish paste, struggling to hit the bites and then loosing some of those that he managed to hook.
A couple of hours in and I was sure I heard a "crack" and sure enough here was a top3 and part of a No4 belonging to Eric going down like the Titanic with a Carp attached.This forced Eric into fishing a top3 for the rest of the match as he didn't have a spare No4 (well he did, but didn't remember till the end of the match
)
Needless to say there was a bit of banter between Malc and myself during the match, one of the main topics being Hydrolastic. "
Just point it at the fish and watch it come back to you" what a load of ************* "
Pump it and lift to lock it" That's why Malc had to stand on his box to net a 2lb'er I suppose .
I kept catching sporadically all through the day, i even had a look at the pellet waggler, getting a Carp and a Chub, but the wind made presentation to awkward, so I stayed on a top2 for the rest of the match.
2½hrs in and a stomach churning stench wafted to my nostrils Malc had got his cat meat out!!!!!!!!
Now this hadn't been kept in a tin but had been fermenting in a plastic bag in his car for gawd knows how long !!!! He even reckoned there were things moving in it I wasn't about to go and look .
With about an hour to go David A popped up for a chat, having resigned himself to forking out another £1 to Gem (
The Minx]) who was fishing her 1st
JINX match. Royst was still muttering about never fishing paste again and a look further up the bank revealed Matt catching at a far steadier rate than anyone else, while Bevan Boy(Brian) had been steadily catching most of the day as had been Dirk on the peg to Brian's right .
6·30pm and weigh in time and the scales reveal 69lbs 4ozs and a pleasing section win for me .
Further round Matt puts an unbeatable 107lbs onto the scales for the win on the day, having fished paste and slop up in the water .
Moving round
The Minx had done more than enough to part David from another £1 . Dirk managed a very creditable 92lbs (just missing out on a
Jinx Ton again ) for 2nd to pip Brian's 83lbs 3rd place weight, in the process winning the section, thus ensuring that the series was kept alive to the last Match at Rolf's.
Peg 2…......Matt N…….......….107lb
Peg 13…....Dirk W.……............92lb 12oz
Peg 12…....Brian B..….........….83lb 12oz
Peg 8…......Peter M….............69lb 4oz
Peg 6…......Eric R……..........….65lb
Peg 11…....Dave M….…..........55lb
Peg 20.…...Mark C…..…..........55lb
Peg 15……..Geoff E……...........52lb
Peg 9…......Malc D..…............46lb 4oz
Peg 10.…...Jimmy L.............…46lb 4oz
Peg 7…......Roy R…..........…….44lb 4oz
Peg 19…....Tim W..…...........…44lb
Peg 16…....Keith A...........……43lb
Peg 3…......Steve W..........….30lb 8oz
Peg 18…....Gemma D.............27lb 8oz (Guest)
Peg 14.…...Nick W............…..23lb
Peg 17…....Ant H…........……...22lb 8oz
Peg 5.….....Derek R…..........…10lb (Guest)
Peg 1…......Simon R…..............7lb
Peg 4.….....Dave A…….............6lb 4oz
Total Weight put on the scales was 934lb 12oz.
So next up it was onto the Final round of the series at Rolf's.