Midland Angling News

Clubbing Together

The club holds matches at Hunnington on a very friendly informal basis for the members, usually twice a month, from March to September.

The idea of having a fishery based club came from fishery owners Lesley Dan and Ollie Tate, who feel its an idea fisheries all over the country should consider, Dan explained “There’s a large contingent of pleasure anglers who use the fishery every week, they would never think of fishing the open matches we hold here simply because they feel the open anglers are in a different league to them.

16 year old Jake Cork

What we did find however was that they were all interested in a fishery based club fishing just for trophies and prizes.The club was formed and has now grown to 35 members, with a new junior section being put together for the spring.”

Last years club championship points winner, was 16 years old Jake Cork from Brierley Hill, (pictured) Jake took home the Champions Shield and other prizes.

Record weight in a club match was the 70-8-0, taken by Ollie Tate.

Membership is just £ 10 per season with the matches being £ 6 each to fish.

Ring Dan on: 07887 845098

Monsters From The Deep

Shatterford fishery owner, Ivan Norman, has only owned the Kidderminster big catfish and carp water for 12 months and his first serious maintenance job on one of the venues pools, proved to be an eye opener to say the least.

The Masters Pool, at the venue developed a leak and had to be drained down to 3 feet deep to complete the repair, venue regulars and owner were all intrigued by the thought of this legendary pool, being seen as never before.

The Masters holds catfish to 54lbs, there are three cats over that weight that reside here, with others in the 20lbs to 40lbs range; carp from 20lbs to 37lbs are the other target fish.

The Masters Pool being pumped out
(Note the island margins sloping down into the pool in the background)

The Masters has a reputation for being 20 foot deep in places, but following three weeks of 24 hour a day pumping it was discovered the pool is in fact over 28 feet deep, with the margins of the pools central island having an incredible 40 foot slope from island trees to the lake bed!

Owner Ivan Norman gave some extra details:
“It was incredible to see the Masters drained down to such a low level, we had hundreds of anglers just drop in to have a look, all those features that had been plotted on many angling trips were clearly visible, with some undiscovered ones being hurriedly sketched by anglers as they walked around the pool!

We added extra features on the bed of the pool at the shallow end, by using the soil removed during the building of the venues new tackle shop.I was quite amazed it took a three quarter ton pump three weeks to drain the pool down to three feet, although the rain we had in February certainly didn’t help speed things up.”

The pool is now almost re-filled and is certain to be just as popular this year as anglers now know the Masters Pool depth is no schoolboy angler’s tale that we have all heard before.

Shatterford is expecting another bumper year, with the others pools onsite providing a huge variety of top class fishing, with carp and catfish in the summer, while in the colder months roach and bream pleasure catch weights top 100lbs, the venues best roach so far this winter is an incredible 2-11-0!

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