Match Reports

Holt SAC Charity Open 2016 (Report)

Sunday 4th September 2016 - Kelling

The 2nd Holt SAC Annual Charity Open was held at Kelling in aid of Mundesley Independent Lifeboat. The match attracted a healthy turn out of 42 from the far reaches of East Anglia and Kent and all were soon tucking into Ahmed’s top range breakfasts. Many thanks to Ahmed for allowing us to use his facilities for the draw and presentation. It is extremely satisfying for the club to have top match anglers from the area and beyond supporting our match scene, many many thanks! With a late 10:30 off all were able to pace themselves to the start but the majority were in 10:00 mode and were soon plodding along the shingle to the surprise of the late comers.

The later start gave us slightly more of the ebb which proved to be fortuitous with the last half hour producing some much needed fish. Weather for the day was forecast to be fresh westerly backing west north west shortly after the start with a few heavy showers later on and they certainly got all this spot on. With predominant off shore winds all week the sea at the start was flat calm and gin clear so everyone was not very optimistic about a good performance and yet again they were spot on. Conditions were ideal for the mackerel which have been hanging around for a few weeks now and a ruling was made that everyone could feather for them up until 20 mins before the start. A few took advantage of this like Tom Gibbs and Craig Bradshaw who not only had fresh bait for the match but a few for the freezer. Of course there were others like Jake Cooper who decided to catch them during the match on worm bait and they were stonking fish, no wonder he wanted them to count in the match, no way!

Pegging for this match was section A just west of the Kelling pillar box to the edge of the west end of the small cliff in front of the car park, with section B from that point to just east of the Weybourne wreck. A nice easy stretch of shingle at the start to set up on as depicted by the covering picture although as the tide ebbed many decamped to the lower reaches. As the wind strengthened and waves picked up a bit there started to be a hint of colour on the edge so was this where the fish would hide but it was only a hint.

At the off there was always that eternal optimism that rods would knock and a steady stream of fish would start coming ashore. With rods remaining motionless for cast after cast things started to look dire and to make matters worst there was weed to contend with. Not serious weed just the general cabbage and red stuff and arm aching retrieves for the casters. In section A things were very very quiet with in the first couple of hours just a 19cm dab to Richard Jacobs and 20cm dab to Mike Watts on his first cast and that was hooked on the tail. Vermin was rife stripping hooks in minutes and even hooked fish as witnessed by poor old (not really so old) Craig Buy. He managed to land a whiting but just the head with rest being devoured by those creatures and now well undersize.

Then things started to improve in section A as a switch of tactics by Dave Burr on peg 1 to crab close in produced a 48cm bass. The lack of fish was really testing some top anglers and some inevitably succeeded like Mark Pinder (peg 13) who found a 43cm bass who then shortly afterwards a 23cm red mullet, yes red mullet. A rare species that is starting to appear in the pots just off shore like the gars that also appear around them. Armed with this information Rob Tuck tried in vain to be the first on this coast to get one of these gars on his card. The final hours in this section did see more bass make an appearance with two to Carmeron Turner (peg 5)(32cm & 37cm), one to Richard Jacob (peg 6)(28cm), one to Garry Hutson (peg 14)(38cm) on his last cast, one to Rob Tuck (peg 19)(36cm) and two to Karl Nangle (peg 21)(35cm & 51cm). Like Garry a nice 31cm flounder at the end helped George Smith (peg 10) to avoid an empty card but not so for 11 others who failed to locate anything. The section was taken comfortably by Karl Nangle with 172 points from just 2 fish which included a 51cm bass. Topping up his bass with a nice flounder saw Dave Burr take second spot with 128 points from 2 fish and Mark Pinder third with 106 points from 3 fish.

Section A was bad but section B was even worse with the fish confined to either end of the stretch at the west end of the cliff and around the wreck with 13 failing to card. In contrast to section A a bass (36cm) was found early on by Paul Kendrick (peg 49) who was directly opposite the wreck. Further bass then followed to “Kipper” Colman (peg 28)(24cm), Nathan Elliott (peg 30)(43cm), Craig Bradshaw (peg 44)(43cm)and two to Peter Brock (peg 48)(43cm & 39cm). Bucking the bass trend was John Lawrence (peg 27) who had 3 good flounders the best of which was 33cm and Jake Cooper (peg 41) with 3 small dabs although he was focused on avoiding the big mackerel. In the end it was Peter Brock’s two bass that gave him the section with 153 points from 3 fish. Second place went to the flounder man John Lawrence with 90 points from 3 fish and third to Nathan Elliott with 79 points from 2 fish.

Altogether just 32 fish (15 bass, 7 flounders, 8 dabs, 1 pout and 1 red mullet) were recorded weighing just under 24lb. Top angler on the day was Karl Nangle with 3lb 9oz from 2 fish followed by Peter Brock with 3lb 3oz from 3 fish. Final podium place went to Dave Burr with 2lb 11oz from 2 fish justifying his long walk to peg 1. Heaviest flat fish was John Lawrence’s 15oz (33cm) Flounder and heaviest round Karl Nangle’s 2lb 11oz (51cm) Bass. On the club front, Paul Kendrick took the day with 1lb from his single fish which was also heaviest club round. Second was Richard Jacobs with 9oz from 2 fish and third was Jake Cooper with 8oz from 3 fish who also took heaviest club flat with a 3oz (22cm) dab shared with Adele Smith.

An interesting match which tested the skills of a lot of top match anglers and with 24 failing record a fish demonstrated how hard it was but as someone said to me during the match “that’s fishing”. The weather played a big part in this one and if we had fished 12 hours later it may have been a different story particularly as bass were the predominant species in this one. Previous year’s match on the same day produced 10x the number of fish as this one so hope it does not deter match anglers from coming to our future events at this special venue.

This was also a Charity match where the proceeds from the raffle were donated to Mundesley Independent Lifeboat and I am pleased to report that this was a sum of £130. This was presented to Wendy Copping (Chairman of Mundesley Lifeboat Friends Committee) at the end of the winnings presentation who also presented the Club with a picture of the Mundesley Lifeboat. I would like to thank Wendy for this memento and would also like to thank all those that participated in the match and raffle for their generous contribution in helping us raise this amount for this very worthy cause.

Mark Pinder and that Red Mullett