The Jinx Series. round 5.
Rolf's Lake. Holton. Oxfordshire.
Saturday 1st September 2007.
Well it's the final match of this years Jinx Series today at Rolf's Lake and for a change there's no driving for me as a fellow Maggotdrowner Paul East aka NoMoreLongWalks had said that he would pick me up as he had managed to secure a guest spot on the match 
. A sunny morning held the promise of a good day and with Paul arriving in good time we had time to stop of in Battersea on the way for a hearty breakfast, and a smooth trouble free trip down saw us pulling into the car park at Rolf's around 11am allowing us plenty of time before the supposed 12 noon draw. The one worry was that as we had driven down the sunshine had disappeared to be replaced with a heavily overcast grey sky.
A stroll round the lake soon revealed that the lake was almost back at it's normal level with most of the platforms finally being above water and that John Bennett had been busy gardening, with a lot of work having been done on the swims.
At the draw there was plenty of discussion, Could Ant hang onto the lead in the series or could a permutation of results today see the long time leader lose out to either Royst, Mark, Brian or Nick and could Dave(yorkie)Moore and Eric maintain their narrow 6 point lead in The Pairs over Mark C and Paul Roberts. The actual draw was a little late (as usual 
) which meant that we would be fishing from 2pm till 7pm.
Into the draw bag and I draw peg34 on the little lake, a peg widely regarded as a flyer. I've only fished it once before on the Saturday of the MD's Pairs weekend, when the lake was still a fair way above it's normal level and had managed 73¼lbs from the peg . With plenty of time before the start I set up a feeder and a new Shakespeare Mach3 11ft pellet waggler rod that I've just brought as well as a couple of top kits for the pole. I was hoping to nick a couple of early fish on the feeder or waggler before concentrating later on the right hand margin.
Looking across I could see Clive who must have run to peg8 as he had drawn it on Bank Holiday Monday and had 202lb 4oz , while the previous Saturday John Walker had 530lbs from the peg, so no pressure there. For company on peg7 Clive had Nick Jones (Polepot) and on 6 Dirk(The Dangler)Williams, with Royst further down on peg 4 and Steve Wilson on 2. While to my left I had Colin on peg36 and Nick(Neo1)Williams on 38 while Mark C was on 40.
So 2pm and all-in, a big handfull of pellet into the bush to my right and another couple in front of it then out to the lily pads with hair rigged meat on the feeder. Looking up I could see that Clive was already in to his 1st carp, swiftly followed by a skimmer.
My tip didn't as much as flicker, normally you would expect lots of little twitches as silvers attacked the bait or even a couple of liners if Carp were present somewhere in the swim, but nothing moved it at all.
Polepot appeared to have snared one on the feeder.........
while Mark C had had one and Steve Wilson had had a couple of fish...........
but looking down the bank to my left resembled a still life as both Colin and Nick were in the same predicament as me..........
I'd been religiously feeding my margin swim, but it it was far to early to take a look and as I had seen a couple of fish topping I decided to take a look with the pellet waggler after 40 minutes of inactivity on the feeder. A couple of pouch fulls of pellet and first cast out the rod is nearly ripped from my hand!!!
The fish put up a spirited fight but the rod dealt with it all, despite the fish at one stage tangling itself in the line giving the appearance to some of it being foulhooked and was soon safely in the net. An obvious weigher, it tipped the scales at 14½lbs, a lovely way to get off the mark and christen a new rod at the same time 
. In the next 30 mins I managed another couple of 6lb'ers and then it died on me.
All the time it had been getting cooler, so much so that I went back to the car for my bib & brace and a fleece. Having a chat with a few of the lads on the car park bank on the way back revealed that it was hard graft for everyone with only the odd fish being caught.
As the afternoon drew on Colin had finally got a carp of about 5lbs while Neo1 had got one as well along with a couple of skimmers. Poor Steve had had a bit of a disaster however, while playing a decent carp his no4 section of his pole had snapped clean in two and he could only watch helplessly as the top 3½ sections of his pole slid below the surface of the lake like Excaliber..........
Continued on next page.....................
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