Hartley Res – May day
The forecast was not bad for a Bank Holiday Monday, so we had arranged to head down to Hartley Lands with a couple on friends ( Mark and Sam). Reports had been good for the Farm reservoir lately and there looked to be plenty of room for us to keep together.
We arrived at about 08:00, and it was not looking too busy which was good, as we had come past Monk Lakes and there were cars streaming in. The Fish ‘O’ qualifiers are being held on there this Wednesday, so probably a lot of people get in a quick practice before then.
Good to see that they now have a food van which does hot food, and also sells a few bits of bait and tackle. Looking forward to a bacon & egg stick later on. There were already about 8 people all set up, but plenty of space on the North bank for us to grab 4 swims in a row. Chatting to the guys already fishing, it seemed to be very slow, and may be due to the match held the day before.
Ryan, Mark and I set up on the method feeders with pellet, while Sam started in close on the pole with maggot. It wasn’t long before Sam pulled in a nice roach, followed by a lovely mirror of about 9lb. On the bottom, we were all getting some small knocks, but nothing taking properly. After about an hour, I got in to my first mirror of about 1/2 lb, before another 2 around the 2lb mark.
Ryan change over to the pole, fishing the top 4, and on double red maggot. He was soon in to some lovely roach up to just over a pound, with the odd small carp, and a few small perch. Mark was still getting some small bites, but not getting anything to really take the pellet. I then had a couple of nice skimmers, and small F1’s, but decided to have a look in the margin with the pole using 6mm meat to see if anything was showing early. Only found a few small roach, and a skimmer which must have leapt out about 1ft in air.
It was still fairly quiet all around the lake, with the exception of the corner by the car park, where 2 guys were catching off top with dog biscuits. It just seemed to early and cold for this technique, but they were saying that you could almost fish on the top all year round there. Time for a quick break, and that lovely bacon & egg stick.
Ryan and Sam were catching plenty of nice roach now nearly every minute on the top 3 or 4 with red maggot, but I decided to stick on the feeder as there seemed to be a bit of movement out there now and the sun popped out.
After another 30 minutes, Mark and I were still struggling on the feeder, so I decided to come in on the top 3 with pellet this time, and almost straight away had a mirror of 5lb, before continuing with a few F1’s.
Mark had started to catch a few nice carp on the feeder now, while the boys were also catching some F1’s and carp in between the roach/perch.
It was about 4pm now, and while the boys were having a little competition to see who could catch a fish the quickest, Ryan was in to this nice fish and Sam went over to have a look, but had left his float out. The next thing we saw was his top 3 heading towards the middle of the lake, then stand upright a disappear. Unfortunately it never re-appeared anywhere, so they packed up and headed home.
I was now fishing tight in to the margin on my right, andin between a few small carp and F1’s, I managed to get into this lovely 9lb 7oz mirror.
I had been feeding an area down to my left all day that was cut right back in to the bank about 3ft x 2ft, and I could now see it was really clouding up with fish feeding, so I called Ryan over to fish it with the top 2 while I started packing his gear away.
He was soon in to the first of 6 fish, all around the 5 – 7 pound mark until he got snapped up on a monster which just took the elastic straight out before breaking the 5lb hook link. Time to pack up after a good day, that had started out pretty slow. Ryan had probably around 90 fish in all, and I had taken about 35.
