All posts by Austin Battell

Match Championship results

The 2023/24 match season came to an end recently and was dominated by one of our long standing members, Colin Fowler, who has fished brilliantly all season and recorded some great weights and some lovely individual fish. Colin may well have broken the match record for overall weight and has won several other trophies over the season. Steve Parker also had a great season, recording what would normally have been a Championship winning weight. In third place was Lee Wakeman who nearly broke the ton mark with 99lb 5oz.

Some other match catches during the season

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Big Pike captures

There have been some great captures of decent Pike on our stillwaters over the winter months. Barden Lake always throws up a few twenty pound plus fish, but it was also good to see Haysden Lake produce some decent fish for a change. Tony Cooper had several fish between 18lb and 24lb and Neal Rogers managed to tempt the same fish Tony caught a few weeks later. Junior member Alex Stokes also done well fishing with dad Gareth on the river, catching an impressive couple of Pike of 15lb 8oz and a Cup winning 16lb 5oz fish.
 

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New Pike League

After last season’s successful Pike match, we decided to introduce a Pike League. Sixteen regular Pike anglers entered and although the fishing was tough, there were still a few nice fish caught, including this stunning 19lb 10oz specimen which gave Melissa Fordham the overall league win and the pleasure of holding our new ‘Limited Edition’ David Hughes sculptured bronze resin Pike trophy. Medway Tackle sponsored the event and donated a lovely Cup for the biggest fish along with some vouchers.

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Lilies treated on the Old Ballast Pit

For many years the Old Ballast Pit has been choked with lilies during the summer months. We have tried various different options up to now with very little impact, so the Society decided to have then professionally sprayed last September. Hopefully this summer will be much clearer from the lilies but we won’t know how effective it has been until they start showing.

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Society invest in some great aeration equipment and remote monitoring system is a real game changer.

The Society recently invested £25,000 into some fantastic new aeration equipment and a state of the art remote monitoring system. This is a real game changer for us, especially with the problems we have encountered over the last couple of summers. We now have sufficient aeration equipment for the Old Ballast Pit and Barden Lake which can be deployed as soon as our remote monitoring system alarm signals that there is a dangerous drop in the disolved oxygen level on either of the two lakes.
We would thoroughly recommend this system to any club, syndicate or other fishery  as this system takes a reading every 15 minutes and can be viewed on a mobile phone at any time. This enables us to respond to any potential issues quickly without having to manually check the water at silly hours of the day or going out in a boat to do so.

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First match of the new season is a grueller

The first match of the new season was the Feeder Only match which is part of the All Rounder Cup. This was held at Haysden Lake and 23 competitors turned out in very challenging conditions. Although pleasure anglers had been catching well on here in recent weeks, this turned out to be really tough for all involved. With a North Easterly wind, bright sunshine and very clear water, bites were very hard to come by. Pete Groombridge took the day’s honours with a single Bream of 4lb 8oz. Second spot went to Roger Trask with 2lb 11oz and third went to Roger Marsh with 2lb 2oz.

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NEW STOCK FOR BARDEN LAKE

This winter the Society has stocked 50 new Carp into Barden Lake with individual fish weighing up to 24lb 8oz. All fish were weighed, chipped and photographed and then put into the stocking records. We also hand selected some of the stand out smaller fish which were real stunners. Here are a handful of some of the fish that were introduced.

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MATCH CHAMPIONSHIP RESULTS

This year, we can congratulate Steve Parker on winning a very close fought Match Championship. It all went down to the last match of the season but conditions didn’t allow for any upsets. Steve ended the season with 80lb 15oz, followed closely by Mick Smith with 78lb 12oz and in third spot was Tony Hyland with 77lb 6oz.

Match Champion Steve Parker

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