Angling: Best for Charlie

Charlie fished a short session in the caf lake to land a superb personal best mirror carp of 22lb on luncheon meat. The big fish was 6lb heavier than his previous personal best.

Other carp taken at the lake include a common of 16lb 8oz tempted by Andrew Morgan.

A mirror carp of 18lb 12oz put a smile on Bob Blake's face when he fished a swim on the grass bank at Billericay's Lake Meadows.

The fish fell to an activate boilie, and was safely landed despite picking up his other line, and that of his son Russell.

Robert Barbor fished the point at Lake Meadows to land a mirror carp of 16lb 12oz and a common carp of 15lb.

Both fish fell to homemade boilies.

Andy's reward

Happiest angler this week must be Andrew Lloyd who popped down to Doggetts for an hour with some floaters and was rewarded with a fine 24lb mirror.

Andrew then had to leave the Rochford fishery, with a huge grin on his face, to enjoy an evening out with the family.

Float fishermen have been enjoying excellent sport at Doggetts this week generally with the usual quality bream and tench showing in abundance.

Paul Mills fished the south bank for an evening and delighted a spectator - who happened to be his six-year-old son - by landing three tench for 9lb 11oz plus four bream to give him a total bag of 27lb.

All Paul's fish were taken on flat fished maggott assisted by a considerable amount of groundbait.

John Watts flat fished the back pool for a couple of sessions with his best bag being five decent tench totalling 18lb.

Simple for Simon

The recent spell of fine weather has seen most local course waters fishing superbly, with Basildon's Pipps Hill Carp Fishery being no exception.

Simon Brook fished off the Oaks swim with 12lb line, a 2oz lead and a size four hook for a terrific hat-trick.

Simon's fishmeal boilie tempted three carp - a 21lb common, a 20lb 3oz mirror and a 14lb 8oz ghost carp.

Basildon angler Ian Price went one better to land four carp from the Pipps Hill pub swim.

Using squid liver boilies, Ian's carp went up to 19lb 8oz and also included two tench to 7lb.

He then returned a day later to take a further three carp from the oaks swim including a magnificent 23lb 8oz ghost carp.

Fishery manager Dave Levy also got amongst the carp when he brought a 20lb mirror to bank off the surface with dog mixer bait.

Lord is king of Hockley

A three-hour match at Hockley Angling Club's day ticket water on Thursday provided plenty of fish in the near perfect conditions.

Dave Lord ruled the proceedings by taking first place (27lb 1oz) with a good mixed bag of carp, roach, rudd, perch, tench and bream.

Len Mason, of Len's Tackle, Hockley, took second place with a similar bag of fish weighing 14lb 10oz.

Third place went to Keith Killick with 14lb 4oz.

The Mavericks Angling Team were the next visitors to Hockley with a five-hour match held during Sunday's hot and humid conditions.

All competitors took fish, with the winner's spoils going to Tony Jenkins and his 34lb 1oz haul.

Tony's catch consisted of various species all caught in the high water.

Using similar tactics, that man Dave Lord was again in the hunt to take second spot with exactly 33lb.

Peter Marshall, proprietor of Essex Angling Centre, was third with 21lb 4oz.

Carp star Bob makes waves at Moat lake

Basildon and District Angling Society had a very special guest of honour when triple world angling champion Bob Nudd visited the Society's Moat lake for a productive four-hour session.

On arrival Bob was offered to fish several noted swims but, after studying the water, he declined and opted to try his luck in swim 26, on the island.

The dry, sunny weather gave Bob some excellent sport and he started to catch straight away with some top crucians falling to the master carp tactician.

Various tempters were used by Bob, including pellets, paste, luncheon meat and maggot, with fish being caught on all of them.

At the end of his spell, Bob had managed to take in excess of 50lb of quality crucian and roach.

He also hooked a good carp just before packing up but it managed to break his line and sped off down the lake.

Bob, an honourary member of the lake, said he had a brilliant day's fishing and asked if he could return to the water in the near future.

Before leaving Bob gave Society organiser Dave Peck a signed rod holdall - used in the recent European and World Championships - as a prize to be won at this year's Neil Peck Memorial / Charity match later in the summer.

The Moat lake also provided action for its less prolific members when the Society fished the first leg of their summer all-in competition.

The weather continued to stay dry and warm for the 45 anglers competing and some good bags of fish were caught.

The winner on the day was local angler John Bell, in Bob Nudd's old swim: 26.

John caught 11 carp, some crucians and roach for an excellent weight of 45lb 2oz. He caught all his fish on the pole using a homemade paste.

Second spot went to Terry Piccollo in swim one, he caught seven good carp for a weight of 41lb 6oz.

Terry fished the pole initially but got snapped up so many times that he decided to fish with a rod and line and tempted his fish with bread and worms.

Third was Russ Woodhead in swim 21 who weighed in 23lb 11oz. He fished with a quiver-tip using bread and luncheon meat.

Park provides record breaking mixed bag

Gloucester Park regular Dave Hemmings has set a new lake record landing a tremendous 226lb 11oz haul at the prolific Basildon day ticket water.

Dave fished the eastern end of the island where he used pole tactics to land fish one after another. His catch included a huge number of tench to a best of 4lb 9oz, carp to almost double figures, crucians, bream and roach, plus the odd chub, barbel and rudd. He also hooked and lost several bigger fish, losing four hooks and two complete rigs during the course of the day.

The record breaking catch was taken using just two tins of sweetcorn, one tin of luncheon meat, and less of a pint of trout pellet.

Earlier in the week a swim at the western end of the island produced a stunning 160lb haul for Gloucester Park angler Mark Redgewell.

Mark fished a waggler using luncheon meat and trout pellet to take numerous tench and carp as well as a lesser number of several other species. His two previous trips to the lake had both produced 60lb plus hauls.

Michael Blackburn fished an evening session at the bear pit swim to take a tremendous waggler haul.

His catch consisted of 38 tench, seven barbel, three carp and two roach. He was also broken up by a number of big unstoppable fish.

There will be an evening match at Gloucester Park tomorrow. Meet at the western end of the lake from 5pm for a 5.30pm walkoff. Match entry will cost £5, with the normal evening ticket payable on the bank.

Fishing time will be 6pm till 9pm. For more information telephone Mick Toomer on 01268 282317.

Top haul for Ben

Thirteen-year-old Ben Patten was into the carp yet again at Shoebury Park, landing fish of 14lb & 13lb, plus two 11lb and an 8lb ghostie in two sessions.

Float anglers have been enjoying good sport on waggler and maggots on pole, with double figure nets being taken.

Weights are being made up of mostly roach and small perch though tench are still showing in numbers along with the odd crucian.

Junior club member Robert Elliot had five tench on his carp gear as did baliff Terry Richards much to his displeasure. Terry also reported losing one of the larger carp when his hook link snapped.

roach and rudd were the order of the day at Southend's Priory Park as bailiff Steve Oz showed on Wednesday by taking over 200 fish on a five metre whip and single maggot.

Five tench to 4.5lb on float fished bread added to his catch.

Meanwhile on Thursday a gentleman on his third visit to the lake, (he blanked on his first two visits) had 15 tench, a number of fair sized roach and carp of 13.5 and 11lb. His method was float fished sweetcorn on a size 10 with 4lb line straight through.

Friday saw Glen Watkins take three carp to 11lb on Starmers Tutti Tangerine boilies.

Sunday was very popular at the lake with lots of youngsters enjoying the sunshine and some good sport. Among them was Steve Bolt who landed a 6lb tench.

Conditions round-up

Southend boats

These two fish plus a few other smaller specimens were caught with live sand eels.

In general, the rest of the charter boats report reasonable fishing with an average catch of around 20 smoothounds a day plus several dogfish, bass, roker and one or two sting ray.

Not surprisingly,the best baits for a majority of the fish are ragworm and crab.

Southend pier

From the shore end of the pier a few flounders are being caught.

Over the last week there have been fewer reports of mackerel being caught but that could be due to the bad weather.

Plenty of horse mackerel have now moved in at the head of the pier with shoals of mullet and a few are now being caught.

Plenty of bass are being seen with the horse mackerel but at the moment they are feeding on the very small livebait.

Very small lures are needed to get them, but when the livebait is not there live sand eels will tempt the bass.

Southend beaches

The eel fishing is still not up to normal, but more will be found out when the evening match gets underway on Thursday bringing some of the local match anglers to the beaches.

Of course there are still flounders to be caught with crab being the best bait, although at night ragworm and lugworm is a good bet for those eels, but be prepared to reel in regularly due to the crabs eating the worms quite quickly.

Gravesend, Tilbury and Stanford

Several soles, eels and flounders from the normal marks.

River Crouch

Alan from the Tartar reports good fishing for smoothounds and bass to 10lb and 5lb respectively plus other smaller species.

From the shore a few eels and small bass are showing from the sea wall along with shoals of mullet from the marina.

River Blackwater

Most boats during last week failed to get outside to the bad weather and had catches of small bass and eels.

However when the weather allowed Terry from the Vicky Emma had 55 smoothounds on one day.

John Rook, aboard the Misty Blue, had the best fish of the week: a 30lb tope plus several smoothounds to 12lb, roker to 12lb and small tope.

John Rawle on the Kingfisher had a group of anglers from the Sea Angler in a competition.

The winner had 65lb, with 2 guys with about 50lb each. Some of the anglers were from the north east and tried to fish as they do up north.

This meant they were trying to pirk peeler crab, which gave John some amusing and frustrating moments as they did not want to be educated in how to fish uptide.

Comment

A worrying point for local angling businesses is not the big mail order shops cutting off trade.

The main problem is that there seems to be less and less people fishing in both sea and freshwater sides of angling generally - but especially in this area's sea scene.

To take an example; two pier open competitions this year had less than 60 people fish them. Five years ago the numbers were over 100 in each one.

The Bait and Tackle night pier match only had 24 people turn up to fish, where unless you had a night pass you could not fish.

In the days of the Old Ben and other night open competitions the number was also towards 100.

Outside our area on the east and south coast you regularly get in excess of 100 anglers for fishing which is often not as good as our own.

What is the reason for anglers in this area not fishing in a year when the fishing is properly the best for a long time? Does anyone in the council actually care or want to help in this matter?

We have the cheapest bait in England yet local anglers still expect it for nothing and the local boats charge less than other areas and can provide some very good fishing.

Local clubs, the NFSA, charter boats, lake owners, the council, local businesses, local shops should get together in one way, shape of form to try and co-operate to help and promote fishing in the area and reverse the continuing trend.

Any suggestions would be welcome to me at the Bait and Tackle centre.

n Northlands Park Evening Series winners show off their shields. Left to right - Mark Campion, Terry Busby, overall winner Peter Steward, Peter Jerrum and Simon Hodder.

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.