UK Trip

After the sucess of the French trip in 2008 we thought we would try and arrange a weeks holiday in the UK where people who do not only fish for carp could come along and have a great week away fishing.

Claire has been chatting to a fishery in Norfolk who said we can fish on their six lake complex in the spring for a week, they have a specimen lake with carp to nearly 40lb and similar sized cat fish, a mixed lake with carp to good doubles crucian to around the 3lb mark, ide, bream, roach and rudd, there is a carp match lake, a silverfish match lake and also a fun lakes with a great stock of all species.

Although the fishing side of their website is a little out of date you can read about the complex HERE
The cost will be £140 for a weeks fishing on the specimen lake (24hrs) or £70 if you want to fish the other lakes (Dawn till Dusk).

Please get in contact with me if you would like to come along, we would like to know numbers as soon as possible as we need to book by the end of January.

We have been offered two dates 22nd – 29th May 2010 or 24th April – 1st May 2010 could you let me know your preference as we will work with the majority decision.

Hope to see many of you there

We can now confirm that the third annual Festival Of Fishing will be held over the weekend of the 5th and 6th of June at the Peterstone Fishery in South Wales. (20 minutes over the bridge)
 
Martin Cronin has very generously has offered us the lakes free of charge and is in the process of making the whole complex accessible to all these works are on going and will all be finished in time for the festival.
 
Everyone at Reels On Wheels wants to say a huge thank you to Martin not only for the use of the fishery but for all the work he is doing to make it accessible to everyone.
 
Despite the change in location we hope that as many of you as possible who have supported the Festival in the past will be able to come along and support us again, we will be keeping he cost of the weekend the same at £20 for the whole weekend this will as usual include entry into both matches and include the Saturday night BBQ.
 
If any of you would like to know what a full Welsh breakfast is like then they will be available at the lodge on both the Saturday and Sunday mornings and they are fantastic value for money just ask anyone who came to the challenge matches.
 
We will have space for upto 60 anglers so if you want to secure your place we will be asking for deposits as soon as possible please
 
 

 
Hopefully someone will be able to prise the best angler (by weight) from Kevs hands after he won it for the second time
 
 
Please PM or email me for details of how to pay as all the addresses have changed in the last year.
 
We are all looking forward to seeing you all there again for a great weekend.

Portable Platform

As everyone involved with angling for the less able will know finding a fishery with platforms that are usable for everyone can be a big headache, so with this in mind I (on behalf of Reels On Wheels) have been working on a solution.

This is what I have come up with, it is a portable platform with all the attachments that you would normally find on a seat box, but it is designed to be used from a wheelchair. With adjustable legs and width adjustment it can be used on almost any bank even when the ground isn’t anywhere near level and in any chair. It packs down into a holdall about 75cm long and is light enough to be carried easily by anyone.

We have been field testing it over the summer and Julz has fished from it several times and everyone who has seen it thinks it is a wonderful piece of kit.

Julz using the platform during the Reels On Wheels Challenge Matches

We have not announced this earlier as we have been waiting for it to be registered with the patent office and we received our registration number this morning it is 4012326

We will now be looking into getting it manufactured ourselves or getting on board with a tackle or seat box manufacturer so that it will become readily available to all that need it.

We not only hope that many people will find this a great piece of equipment but that fisheries who have problems with accessible swims will invest in one or two of them to allow chair users to fish as many swims as possible.

Opportunities Trust

Over the last few weeks we have been talking to the Opportunities Trust (Cambridgeshire) about what they do and what we do, after they found out about us through Rosie’s crafting.

Reels On Wheels has now become a member of this group which aims

To provide a rich menu of activities and support for people with disabilities and impairments across Cambridgeshire, including people with mental health issues and older people.

Services include learning, independent living, leisure, social skills, education and work preparation sessions and are available to people with personal budgets, direct payments or independent ways of paying for the activities you choose.

We will be enabling people to get back to the waters edge or to try fishing for the first time, which is very much in line with our primary aims and objectives.

We have decided that we will not charge for our sevices but will charge for expenses such as fuel, ticket costs and bait, thus giving as many people as possible the chance to try our great pastime.

Anglers Paradise

Arriving at Anglers Paradise on Saturday lunch time was like being greeted at a friends house everyone seemed to remember us from our previous visits.

We all had a quick drink with Zyggy and then unloaded the bus and headed straight for the lakes, as Julz had been doing some pole fishing recently she wanted to catch more big fish on the pole so we chose to fish beginers carp lake for a couple of hours, where sure enough Julz managed a couple of lovely carp both of which broke her previous pole PB.

5lb 2oz was the smaller of the two fish but the prettier

On the Sunday we fished some of the smaller lakes catching some wonderfully colourful fish, including a 3lb koi carp, golden rudd of 2oz and Koi orfe of 4oz

That night we were joined by Nick and Amber at the BBQ which Rosie was working at and afterwards we all went to the bar for a drink and met up with Tinca Steve (Nice to meet you and your family) before a reasonably early night

On the Tuesday we met up with Nick and Rosie to fish Easy Access lake, the whole complex has been fishing hard this summer due to the ever changing weather conditions and today was no exception, with wind rain and sunshine at various points of the day, Nick landed a lovely carp that didn’t quite make double figures at 9lb 14oz

Then Rosie caught a fish on feeder which led her a merry dance diving into the reeds, but Rosie waited and waited and after a bit of assistance from me poking around the weeds with a landing net and from Nick the fish came out and graced the bank at 10lb 11oz you played it so well Rosie I’m sure most anglers would have given up and lost the fish.

The weather in the latter part of the week got windier and wetter but we were still catching a few fish, Michael and I spent a day wondering round dipping into various lakes with feeder rods and Michael managed to land his own double on feeder from a lake not renound for big fish.

The last full day of fishing was spent on the main carp lake looking for bigger carp and cats, there was only one run all day and that resulted in a new personal best for Julz of 16lb 2oz

All in all a great week despite the up and down weather, it was great to spend a day fishing with Rosie and Nick as well, hopefully we will be down there again soon

Peterstone Weekend

Well as most of you know we held the 1st challenge match this weekend and despite the 7 hr journey that should have taken just under 3 hrs it was a cracking weekend.

Firstly I would like to thank Martin Cronin for allowing us to use one of his lakes for the 2 days and for looking after us all…

Below…Jamie and Ryan watching the sun go down

Saturday was sunny with the odd passing cloud but the wind did get up a bit but despite that everybody fished hard and caught fish…the weights were low but I think everybody had fun and found the lake a challenge.
The results for Saturday were…
1st. Jamie with 22lb – 6zo
2nd. Micheal with 20lb – 11oz
3rd. Paul with 16lb – 1oz.

Below is Martin presenting Jamie with his winnings which on the day came to £60 and Martin handed over an extra £30 from Himself.

Sunday saw a rather misty start to the day and luck was with us as it stayed dry for the most part.

3 locals joined us on the Sunday…Merv who is a very special chap as you will see by the end of this report….Mat who runs the Welsh carp forum and Andrew a local Disabled angler who enjoyed himself and we hope to see him at the festival next year.

Once again it was angler versus the fish and the winning weights were as follows.

1st Merv with 27lb – 10oz
2nd. Kevin with 23lb – 2oz
3rd. Jamie with 20lb – 10oz.

Now at the presentation Merv was given his winnings which came to £90 and he handed then back to me saying…give half to young Jamie for showing just what he could do up against grown men…(Jamie is only 12) and the other half was to go to Micheal who had broken his nos 4 pole section on the saturday so it would go towards buying a new one.

Merv…you join the Cronin club and become “A Diamond Geezer”…thank you and we hope that you will join us next year at our Festival being held at Peterstone thanks to Martin.

Below Merv collecting his winnings and a couple of pics of some of the people there plus the “Minder” looking after the Raffle prizes….

Thanks to Martin and the generosity of all involved and those members of the Birch who bought Raffle tickets we raised a total of £208. Special thanks to Julz who sold the tickets.

SPECIAL NOTE….on the friday night i told Jamie and Ryan that if they beat their Dad (Kevin) i would give them £20…they both beat him BUT told me to put the money into R)W…so boys well done for beating Dad…it is a day to remember and thank you for your donation.

Challenge Matches

 

We have organised a pair of challenge matches be held over the weekend of Sat 29th and Sun 30th of August (Bank Holiday weekend) at the newly refurbished Peterstone fishery in South Wales (Just over the Severn Bridge)

There will be a match on both the Saturday and the Sunday you can enter one or both enter both the choice is yours the cost will be £10 per match with a first prize of £150 for the winner.*

There will be room to bivvy up over night if you want to and there will be food available on the complex.

 

The draws will take place between 9.30 and 10am with the match taking place from 11am till 4pm on both the Saturday and Sunday.

The Peterstone lakes are a real mixed fishery with roach, rudd, bream, tench, barbel, carp and F1s.

The rules for the match are as follows.

First and most importantly ALL nets must be bone dry before bringing them onto the complex, any one found with wet or damp nets will not be allowed to fish there will be checks before the match.

Barbless hooks only

No particles or nuts, hemp and sweetcorn allowed

Carp and silvers in seperate nets

Maximum 50lb per net. If you fill a net please call a marshall to have the contents weighed and returned to the water. (Nets weighing over 60lb the whole net will not count)

We will be holding a raffle on the Saturday and the Sunday with some great prizes on both days.

You will also be able to purchase one of the best full breakfasts in Wales at the lodge both mornings.

We are looking forward to a great weekend with some wonderful fishing so please come along and join in.

*We will either pay out 75% of peg fees or the full £150 whichever is the least amount

Nick at Fish O Mania

Julz and I went off to meet Nick at Moorlands Farm on the friday in the Buddy Bus, the main idea was to give Nick somewhere to have a good nights sleep befor the match.

We all met up at about lunch time and sat down for a cup of tea and a chat and decided it might be a good idea for Nick and I to have a few hours fishing just to see how the fish reacted to various methods and baits, so after getting some advice from the fishery manager we went down to one of the few pegs that were easily accessible for Nick and I fished next to him.

We tried various method at various depths and had vaying amounts of success although we both caught a few ‘Flying’ bream, as soon as these were hooked they jumped right out of the water an amazing sight. I did manage a nice carp which turned out to be a new PB on the pole

6lb 3oz

So with a rough plan of action formulated we retired to the bus for food and chat, Nick was also getting some more advice from his great friend Jim over the phone.

The day of the match and we were all up by 6am plenty of tea and bacon sandwiches, Mark (angler-mark) arrived at about 7.30 to lend his support to team ROW as well

Nick went up for the draw at about 8am and was back soon with his peg, he had drawn peg 43 on meadow lake, not a bad draw by all accounts, meadow was the fancied lake for the day and from Nicks point of view he could also park behind his swim.

Mark and I helped get all Nicks bits down to his swim and by 10.30 he was sitting waiting for the all in.

The weather started off over cast and pleasant but got hotter and hotter through the day so the fishing was very hard for everyone,

With only 2 carp Nick still wanted to weigh in…so he did it was a low weight of only 7LB 8oz BUT the scalesman said…if I had had one more fish I would have got section…so many weights were low.

 By the end of the match we were all well and truely cooked and needed a cold drink before we all headed home.

Sponsored 24hr Fish

The 24hr fish was upon us so Julz and I set off in a fully packed Buddy Bus with the aim of getting to the fishery by 11am this would give us an hour before the start to get everything sorted …..but things don’t always go to plan do they and the satnav took us to the wrong road so we started the day lost, after some frantic phone calls we figured out where we were and where we needed to be and arrived at the fishery with about 20 minutes to get all set up. Mark and Bob greeted us at the gate and then we set about getting all our gear sorted.

Mark was already set up on a peg so we went on the next two pegs, Julz fishing long over a bed of bait on one rod and close in on the other. Mark and I were both using the pole to start with.

Fishing was quiet all afternoon which may have been something to do with the weather it was scorching hot with thunder rumbling all around and torrential rain a few miles from where we were fishing but all we had was a half hour heavy shower.

Julz managed a couple of very slimy characters during the afternoon both about 3 and a half pounds

Lesley (Marks wife) came down during the evening carrying a huge bag of hot fish and chips which were greatfully recieved by all of us, thank you Lesley.

As soon as the sun began to set the sport began in earnest.

for about 7 hours we were catching bream and tench one after another, Mark had a nice tench of 4lb 14oz which half an hour later I matched with one of my own,

Julz had a rattling bite which we thought might be a tench but as it came over the net she was thrilled to see it was one of few carp in the lake, which according to Mark are still quite a rare sight on the bank.

The great sport carried on till about three in the morning when it slowed right down as I think we all did as the Tuesday dawned it started to warm up and the sport slowed even more, but the warm weather meant that everything that was wet could be dried out before we packed away.

Several people came down to see us finish off the 24hrs we had quite a crowd watching, thanks to all the members at Sutton Lane who came down to see us, thanks for allowing us to hold the event there and letting us be the first people to fish it at night. In total we caught over 80lbs of fish in 24hrs

The survivors photo after 24hrs of fishing !!!

Finally I would like to say a big thank you to everyone who sponsored us and especially to Mark for coming up with the idea, arranging it and being great company for the whole time. Between us we caught over 80lb of fish over the 24hrs

So far the 24hr fish has raised well over £200 we will have the final total in about a weeks time as the final forms come back to us.

Fishing Festival Report 2009

After all the preparation the Festival started for me on Thursday when I went to collect Gary (The Tidalwave) from London so he could attend the festival. We loaded the Buddy Bus and set off for the Manderson Trust on Friday morning where we set about setting up the marquee, BBQs and everything else that would be needed for the Festival weekend, some anglers (mostly trust members) arrived on the Friday drew their pegs and got themselves settled in for the weekend some of them even had some nice fish out, here is Mark with a lovely common,

As is becoming normal the Friday evening was filled with hilarity and general chat as we all prepared for the weekend.

 

Saturday morning the rest of the anglers started arriving and getting set up ready for the Wandering Angler match, unlike last year the lakes were fishing quite well and there were plenty of fish out during the four hours of the match.

 

During the match I was called away from my peg by Nick where I found him holding down the marquee on his own, the wind had picked up and un-pegged the whole thing unfortunately the glass prizes for first and second places on Sunday got smashed so we had nothing to hand over but these will be replaced and the winners will still have a trophy to put on their mantle pieces.

 

The results of the match were in third place was Davy P with 14lb 7oz in second was Kev W with 14lb 11oz (Kev is making a habit of finishing second he did it in both matches last year) but the match was won by Steve E (Hipflask) with 16lb 5oz. Well done to those three, here they are receiving their prizes from Mick Brown on Sunday

After the match the BBQ was fired up and with the invaluable help of Katie and Michael we served up chicken, sausages and burgers to everyone there was plenty of food to go round and the drink and banter flowed until nearly midnight when the last of the revellers drifted off to their bivvies to get some sleep before Sundays match.

 Kev P had to leave early on Saturday evening as his wife had fallen over at home, we were all glad to hear later that apart from a lot of bruises she hadn’t hurt her self too badly.

Sunday morning dawned and the weather wasn’t looking too promising but it stayed dry long enough for everyone to have sausage and bacon rolls for breakfast and get onto their pegs before the heavens opened. The rain was torrential and the wind was blowing a right hoolie but the lakes were fishing quite well again and despite the wind and rain there were no more upsets with the marquee.

 

The results for the Sunday match were, in third place with 29lb 5oz was Jim, in second with 31lb 15oz was Seb and in first place breaking his run of seconds was Kev with 39lb 2oz

Here they are receiving their prizes

There was then the matter of four other prizes to sort out, the best angler of the festival by weight, the best angler as voted for by the competitors, the drawn pairs competition and finally the booby prize.

 As you have probably worked out Kev won the best angler by weight with a great weight of 53lb 13oz for the whole weekend

The drawn pairs was won by Kev W and Kev P despite Kev P having to go and look after his wife after her fall so his whiskey tumbler will be posted on to him

 The angler of the match as voted for by the other competitors was an overwhelming vote for one man who fished pretty much every minute of the weekend he could and produced some great results. Congratulations to Seb

The booby prize winner was a decision of the ROW committee and was unanimous, it went to an angler who despite catching nothing all weekend was always there with a smile, a helping hand and some chat it went to Gary (The Tidawave)

A huge congratulations goes out to all those who won prizes over the weekend and a thank you to all those who turned up to make the festival the huge success it was.

After the festival had finished Mick even had time to have his picture taken with Nick in front of both the Buddy Bus and the Beast

Special thanks from me must go to the Wandering Angler for sponsoring the Saturday match and other prizes, Katie and her two lovely daughters for doing a great job with the selling of raffle tickets, also to Katie and Michael for the help with the BBQ, to Mick brown for taking time out of his busy schedule to spend the day with us all and to Gary for all his help loading and unloading everything I take with me to the festival also to Nick for allowing me to organize the whole event which is an honour and privilege but also for stopping me doing to much and making me delegate.

 

 

I’m sure I can speak for everyone at Reels On Wheels when I say thanks to everyone for coming and making the festival a great event and we all hope to see you at next years event over the weekend of the 5^th and 6^th of June at the Peterstone fishery South Wales.