Bristol PSV Fishing Club: Holgan Farm 3-Day Festival

Ten of Psv's elite made the 2½ hour journey into deepest, darkest Wales for another go at Holgan Farm, the fishery owned and run by former World Champion Ian (Ronnie Corbett) Heaps.
8 of us were veterans from our last visit back in 2012 which was won by myself in case anyone needed reminding (see here) and the two Lee's, Williams and Waller were the Holgan virgins.
This time round we would all be staying at the fishery, which was a bit more practical than the last time round when we were spread around the Welsh countryside and, as before, the winner of the first match would get first shout on the choice of accommodation.
And this year we were fishing the Carp Lake on day one followed by the Tench / Crucian Lake and finishing off on the Match Lake which was unfortunate as the Match Lake usually produces provides the best fishing and it would have been nice to have been on there on day 1 or 2 when there was no hurry to get started or finished.

Day 1. Carp Lake

The Carp Lake is the first lake you come across and has plenty of fish-holding features including islands, lilys plus some very inviting margins.
The official advice from Ronnie which seemed to apply to all the lakes, was to start down the edge on topkit plus one or two sections and get an early fish there and if you never caught a second fish in the time it takes to smoke a fag to try somewhere else but the important thing was to keep rotating swims after each fish.
The other important bit involved buying plenty of various coloured / sized pellet from the on-site shop (fishery pellet only here) but whatever the advice was, Alan Healey in peg 3 chose to ignore it completely and fished maggot to the island (lots of them) to win comfortably with 70-8.
The rest of us found it tough going, plenty of fish cruising around, plenty of foul-hookers and lost fish but real bites were hard to come by.
Lee Williams did well to sneak into 2nd with 45-4, just ahead of Mark Radford who managed 40-8 for 3rd place.
Despite my best efforts chucking a small waggler to (onto) the island in front of me I could only manage to winkle out four carp for 18-12 but that was good enough for 4th place so a reasonable start points-wise for me but way behind on weight.

Alan Healey (3) ....... 70-8
Lee Williams (19) ...... 45-4
Mark Radford (8) ...... 40-8
Steve Burgess (10) .... 18-12
Mike Welling (7) ....... 17-0
Ryan Radford (29) .... 16-9
Darren North (23) .... 15-2
**** ******* (21) ...... 12-14
Lee Waller (27) ........ 5-0
Derek (13) .... unlucky for some

The evening was spent in The Bush, which was where I'd spent most of my day!

Good food, a few bevvies and the usual nonsense involving pool tables, dartboards and much fishing related rubbish.

Alan spent most of the night on the phone to Dean Malin telling him how good he was!

Day 2. Tench / Crucian Lake

This lake has a bit of a misleading name as the tench are a bit scarce ... talking to one of the regulars beforehand revealed that we would be lucky if 2 tench would show up between all of us.

The crucians are the mainstay of this lake but we had been warned in advance that this lake was fishing really hard (it was crystal clear) and it was likely to be a tough match ... it was!

Ronnie Corbett forcasted 20lbs being a weight to be proud of today and advised the best method would be to fish paste on topkit plus 2 at the bottom of the near shelf. Most ignored this and concentrated on the mass of lillies that fill the middle of the lake.

I drew peg 21 which put me on the far bank of the lake with Lee Williams for company in 25 which was the peg I was on last time round and was good for 2nd on that day.

My advice for the day was to fish a straight lead tight to the lillies but I didn't fancy that with my dodgy casting so I opted to fish 16m instead which got me within a foot or two to the lillies straight out and tight to them at the 10 o clock position.

My neighbour won the match with 15-8 but was run close by the other Lee (Waller) who weighed 15-2 but had a "torrid" day losing a lot of fish in the pads.

Mind you, he was cracking cans of Thatchers from 10 o clock so his bite reactions were probably hampered.

I started well hooking a big bream within 10 minutes of the start but after a few tentative minutes I lost it at the net .... not happy!

After that I struggled horrendously and staved off the boredom by fishing caster shallow at 16m for blade roach and half-ounce skimmers.

I never had a sniff of a crucian and never even had the float wobble on the paste line.

My collection of fry gave me the grand total of 14oz and 8th on the day pretty much putting me out of the overall running unless I was to win the final match and Lee and Alan were to go home early.

Ryan Radford gave up early and took a lead rod over to the Match Lake and had 3 fish in about 10 minutes which promised good things for the final day.

After the match **** treated everybody to a lesson in paste fishing on the Carp Lake (see video).

Lee Williams (25) .......... 15-8
Lee Waller (5) ............... 15-2
Alan Healey (29) .......... 9-12
Mike Welling (4) ........... 8-0
Ryan Radford (14) ........ 5-2
Darren North (6) .......... 5-1
**** ******* (8) ............. 3-2
Steve Burgess (21) ........ 0-14
Mark Radford (17) ........ 0-9
Derek Lucas (11) .... oh dear!

The evening was spent on site, following an alcohol-run to the nearby town.

Ronnie Corbett kindly got the chef to do us a deconstructed steak & ale "pie" accompanied by jacket spuds and beans, yep, beans (as requested by **** *******)!!

In hindsight a pizza delivery might have been better and probably cheaper but you live and learn as they say.

The draw for the Match Lake was done in order to save time in the morning and we also did a draw for a pairs match which conveniently partnered me up with Lee Williams so there was some hope for a pickup after all.

Some bright sparks decided it would be a good idea to check out their pegs in the pitch dark and set their kit up while the rest of us spent the night in true "festival" tradition getting bolloxed into the early hours and looking forward to a few fish at last.

Except for Derek that is, who snuck off to bed to watch Match of the Day through his eyelids and **** who spent the evening with Ronnie Corbett and friends watching X-Factor in Ronnie's office / brandy cabinet.

Day 3. Match Lake

As I said the draw had been done the night before so following breakfast we were straight to our pegs and looking forward to a good day's fishing.

Unfortunately the fish had other plans and it was soon apparent that it wasn't going to be the fishfest we were all hoping for.

In fact it was dire.

Mike Welling on peg 28 had an early fish on the waggler fished on top of a sunken island the size of a dinner table that he was sharing with myself. I could reach it with 16m of pole but Mike needed a hefty chuck to get to it but as I'm not a moaning type I won't dwell on that!

I also had one early down the edge but smoking a fag as slowly as I could I never had another down there.

A few others had their early fish too including Derek at long last, but after that initial flurry of activity it all went quiet.

Mike had a few more down the edge but he also had one jump out of his keepnet which was to prove costly.

As it turned out, my pairs partner did the business again from peg 22 weighing in 43-8.

**** was second with 33-0, followed by Mark Radford whose 4 bites and 4 fish gave him 32-12.

Mike Welling weighed 31-12 putting him out of the money by 1lb so that lost fish would have got him second on the day ... but there was worse news to come as Mike and Alan ended up level on points for second in the series which meant Alan took the spoils by weight advantage.

That meant Mike's flying fish cost him £60

There was some consolation though as Mike and Mark Radford won the pairs after tying on points with Lee and myself and scraping through by 2oz ... oh well!

No suprise then that the overall winner was Lee Williams with a near perfect 29 out of 30 points so well done that man.

And, as usual, you can read how he did it by clicking here