Rolfslake Wednesday Open 20th March 2014.
First 2oo lb weight of the year.
With the lake starting to warm up in advance of the Easter Festival the attendances in these midweek matches are starting to grow as the fishing just gets better and better with all species willing to have a feed so you will never be short of bites at the moment.
The one thing that i have not seen for a long while is the size of the carp coming out as i recon the average size of the fish today must of averaged about 13lb as there were lots of 14 to 18lb fish with John Bennett 3 fish going for 55lb. Also the silver fishing is fantastic as Pat Pritchard put a near 45lb net of roach on the scales all caught at distance with fish approaching 12 ounces and with Steve Waters new silver fish record of bream going 81lb last Saturday it wont be long before someone catches the first 100lb weight of silvers and claims the bottle of Champagne on offer. There is a silver fish open this Saturday to those that want to get lots of bites and the chance to catch bream to 5lb and that possible 100lb weight.
Today started quite cold but there were still lots of carp topping around the lake and with the pleasure anglers already catching the omens were good that the carp would feed.
With the draw called and only the big lake in use today all the feature pegs were in play so the anglers were not going to be far away from the feeding fish so hopefully a good match lie ahead. The story of the match was that the fishing started slow except for Andy on peg 18 ,Neil on peg 22 and dare I say John on peg 24 who were all into early fish but for the rest it was a case of lost big fish causing the problem with Frank Donachie playing tug of war with the carp on peg 9 who were winning in their quest to get to the big bush to his right.
I was also having my challenges losing 11 carp in total in the bush to my left as Paul on peg 14 had fed quite a bit at the start and had drawn too many fish there causing foul hooked fish and not too many properly hooked fish.
In first place today was lake owner John Bennett who gave a great demonstration of what happens when you put a good angler on a fish filled peg and John used a combination of waggler fished shallow with pellet and corn hookbait when he sun was up, the bomb when there was a shadow on the lake again with pellet and corn and in the last hour John fished the long pole fished on the deck to catch his remaining carp.
When it came to weighing in John’s fish there were some huge fish to 18lb in his 4 nets and these fish were in fantastic condition and as i mentioned earlier 3 fish went 55lb alone and the next 3 went 44lb so some big fish are there to be caught and in total John caught about 17 fish to claim the lake king for the moment with the first double ton of the year with his weight of 230-04 [ very well done John ].
In second place was Andy Quarmby who fished the pole both long down the edge and straight out in front to also catch some really big carp by fishing pellet hook bait feeding pellet both on the deck and shallow to record his weight of 127-04 which is a shame as Andy told me he caught about 100lb of this in the first 2 hours then struggled for the rest of the match but at least it was a good piece of practise for the current Easter Festival champion.
Completing the frame was John Draper who was next to me on peg 10 and after a very slow first 3 hours John’s peg sprung into life when he fished down the edge to his left at a range of top two plus two fished very tight to the bank fishing pellet hook bait again catching big fish to 16lb in his final weight of 94-05.
Part of John Bennetts 230lb carp catch. [ Well done John ]
Middy sponsored Andy Quarmby in second place. Dont worry Paul you are not in the photo.
John Draper dont worry your photo is coming
Pat Pritchards near all roach net of 44-05
Colmic sponsored Frank Donachie with a Rolfslake beast of 17lb.
Results
10 fished
| Place | Angler | Peg | Weight | |
| 1st | John Bennett | 24 | 230-04 New Lake King 2014 | Rolfslake |
| 2nd | Andy Quarmby | 18 | 127-04 | Middy |
| 3rd | John Draper | 10 | 94-05 | Rolfslake |
| 4th | Neil Riddy | 22 | 93-05 | Jinx League |
| 5th | Frank Donachie | 9 | 70-00 | Colmic |
| 6th | Paul Jay | 14 | 55-14 | Rolfslake |
| 7th | Pat Pritchard | 28 | 44-05 [ all silvers ] | Rolfslake |
| 8th | Eddie Taylor-Green | 13 | 43-00 | Rolflake |
| 9th | Graham Ridgely | 16 | 34-05 | Rolfslake |
| 10th | Neil Hutchins | 32 | 22-13 | Rolfslake |
Give a thrashing one week take a thrashing the next week.
After my first victory lat week i was pretty confident this week as i drew peg 13 again for the second week running but it was to no avail as in the report above John had drawn the aquarium peg and was extracting most of the fish from the middle of the lake.
I know when John is doing well as I hear about every fish he catches as he shouts to me every time he nets one and today he refered to himself as the goal keeper as he kept picking a fish out of the net so today was a long 5 hours for me.
The score now stands at
John 4
Eddie 1
For the record John has allowed the placing of double fish in the net only for a short period of time which will shortly be coming to an end and no more than 4 doubles are allowed in the nets to protect them.
Just for the dog lovers out there i thought i would share a few pictures of Pat Pritchard and his two lovely dogs which come down the lake and are very well behaved.
Pat Pritchard with his two dogs
Thanks for reading John, Simon and Eddie.
