Society Chairman Austin Battell has had a great three sessions on Barden Lake. Fishing with a feeder rod and not feeding heavy, the first session produced a Bream of 13lb 2oz and a lovely Carp of 45lb. The second session produced two Bream of 8lb 2oz and 12lb 8oz and the third session produced one good bite which resulted in a stunning 9lb Tench. All fish were caught using 10lb mainline with 8lb hooklink and size 10 hook.
BARDEN LAKE CAPTURES
RECENT CAPTURES FROM THE OLD BALLAST PIT
A great session on the Old Ballast Pit
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
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.
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.
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.
Some great work party projects
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.