Luton Angling Club - Weekly News Reports: Luton Angling Club Weekly News Report for the Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire & St Neots Cambridgeshire Area

Here is the latest news, information and catch reports round up from Luton Angling Club,

New Membership Year 2025/26!

Next weekend 1st June, is the start of our 2025/26 Membership season. The locks will be changed late on 31st May. Existing members that have not renewed must vacate the venues by 8pm on 31st May to avoide being locked in. As the 1st falls on a weekend our popular venues - Beckerings and North House Lake are likely to be very busy for the first few weekends, with new members wanting to try out their new memberships. Please park appropriately and make best use of the parking space available. Our car parks have limited space, if the car park is busy and you do need to block someone in please leave your phone number on a note on your dashboard and be prepared to reel in your lines and move your vehicle. New members are reminded to fully read the membership book and familiarise themselves with all the venue rules BEFORE going fishing.

Obituary - Dave Smith (Abbey Lad's AC)

The club has been given the sad news that Dave Smith passed away on the 11th May at the age of 80. Dave was the founder member of Abbey Lads AC in 1970 and was the chairman for most of those years. He was well known by our own match group and many of them fished with, and against him for many years.

The Abbey Lads have been associated with the Luton Match scene for many years and they still go out with the Wednesday match group quite often. They tell me he was an extremely nice and very popular chap.

Should anyone wish to attend to celebrate his life, Dave's funeral will be held on Friday 30th May at Thomas Moore Catholic Church in Waltham Abbey at 12pm then on to Waltham Abbey Cemetery.

The wake will follow at the Sultan Pub, Sewardstone Road, Waltham Abbey.

He will be sadly missed by all that knew him and we know he was very fond of all the Luton lads and the banter between them all.

North House Lake

Andy Smith had a good 48hr session on North House Lake. He had a 30lb 8oz Mirror (aparrently a named fish called Shotgun Willy) he also had a 26lb 4oz Common and a 23lb 10oz fully scaled Mirror, which I think is number 8 stockie from 2017 which has grown really well. He also had a perfect condition Common at 15lb, and then on the final cast of the session another Common finished off his session nicely.

Andy Smith - Stockie 8 North House Lake

Stockie 8 when it was stocked in 2017

Andy Smith - North House Lake

Andy Smith - North House Lake

Andy Smith - North House Lake

Andy Smith - North House Lake

Andy Smith - Shotgun Willy - North House Lake

Nebojsa Gal had 3 fish from North House on Sunday, 17lb mirror, 10lb dark mirror, and 15lb common. The fish had a few spawning wounds that he treated before the fish were returned

Nebojsa Gal - North House Lake

South Lagoon

Nobby Clarke fished South Lagoon again today, he used an 8 metre whip with flick tip in 5’ of water, he said once you find the Roach which is the hard bit, the sport can be amazing. Today, he said he bumped so many fish , decent Roach ,Skimmers & proper Bream, and he put that down to poor angling!

It took about an hour to start getting a few indications, then by pinging a few grains of hemp on every put in the fish were soon taking hemp & corn freely. He commented that "it really is fishing well on all methods and as we know some superb bags of bream are coming to feeder" Nobby has had decent Roach on whip and waggler, and said "it's well worth a day - tight lines everyone"

Nobby Clarke - South Lagoon Roach

Nobby Clarke - South Lagoon Roach

Nobby Clarke - South Lagoon Roach

Beckerings Reservoir

Darren Savage had a great afternoon at Beckerings on Thursday. He had seven carp, one stocky, two double figure commons, three 20lb+ and the half lin at 31lb.

Darren Savage - Beckerings

Darren Savage - Beckerings

On Tuesday reservoir regular Jason Mash had 3 runs off the bottom, two landed, and one lost. A move paid off, resulting in the bigger common.

Jason Mash - Beckerings

Martin Scholes did a session and had a total of 10 carp but he only has pictures of 9 of them the one missing is an 11lb 4oz common, he also lost another carp and also had 5 bream and a Catfish at 39lb 14oz

Martin Scholes - Beckerings

Lee Richardson had a 43lb Catfish at Beckerings it was taken on meat. He sends thanks to the bailiff for his assistance netting it.

Lee Richardson - Catfish , Beckerings

Carlo had a lovely clean Common which weighed 25lb 7oz on his Friday night session.

Carlo - Beckerings Common

Canal Pairs Heat Sunday 25th May.

This week the club hosted a heat of the National CRT Canal Pairs on the canal at Three Locks. We had 17 pairs with some very well-known anglers fishing the competition and 6 of the pairs secured qualification to fish in the Grand Final which is to be held on the Dudley Canal later in the year.

The morning was cool and overcast after rain the night before, with a stiff westerly breeze which strengthened during the day, although fortunately the canal in this area is quite sheltered. The canal held good colour, but float presentation was hampered by the large amount of floating blossom which had blown from the bushes and moved backwards and forwards with boat locking.

The sun broke through the clouds in the afternoon, and when it did, the fishing that had had started slowly, gradually improved as the water warmed. Luton had five pairs fishing, including one of our juniors Daniel who was fishing with his dad Paul, but unfortunately, on this occasion none of our local Luton pairs qualified, better luck next time.

The highest weights were recorded from B section below the locks (Luton Section 3), while the fishing on section A above the locks (Luton section 4) was patchier. The best result for a Luton angler was Adrian Smith who managed to catch a very creditable 4lb 14oz for second place on Section A.

Results Section A

1st Mick Howells 6lb 0oz

2nd Adriam Smith 4lb 14oz

3rd Stephen Joy 4lb 5oz 4drm

Results Section B

1st Martin Harwood 9lb 12oz

2nd Matt Oliver 8lb 10oz

3rd James Drakulic 6lb 5oz

Qualifying pairs from this heat were:

1st Dave Tebbutt & James Drakulic

2nd Charlie Robinson & Matt Oliver

3rd Stephen Joy & Paul Cowern

4th Peter Vasey & Gordon Curl

5th Damian Green & Ant Williams

6th Mick Howells & Micheal Shepherd

Thanks to everyone on the Luton team who helped organise and run this event, which passed off very smoothly, without the help of all those involved in general organisation, pegging, booking in, organising the draw, running the bank, weighing the sections and collating the results we wouldn’t be able to run an event like this, so well done and thanks to everyone.

Canal Pairs

Daiwa ‘Let’s Fish’ South East Regional Match

Grand Union Canal - Town South Sunday 18th May 2025

On Sunday Luton Angling club hosted and ran a large and most prestigious match for young people. One of the Daiwa sponsored 2025 CRT Let’s Fish South East regional heats.

This is one of the largest events for young people that the club has run for many years.

We had 23 booked to fish, but unfortunately one of the Cadets didn’t make it as he had been ill. His mum emailed us to apologise saying he was heartbroken not being able to attend, which left us with 22 competitors, we had 5 Cadets and 17 Juniors, many of whom had travelled significant distances to compete.

We had arranged a CRT mooring restriction for the day of the match, and we were able to peg Town South unobstructed from the CRT bin compound to the white bridge.

The Canal looked great, with signs of spawning fish, but the morning was rather cool and overcast, but the sun did peak through the clouds around midday. We had one boat pass after the draw before the match started, and then as we made our way to the pegs a man in a canoe got rather too close to the resident swans and their cygnets on the section so they attacked!. Both him and his canoe ending up floating in the canal!

It's worth remembering that CRT rules in these matches limit the length you can fish from the bank to 3 Metres for the first 90 Mins to level the field.

The Cadet section was won by Matthew from Northampton Nene with 290 grams, with one of our Luton Cadets who was fishing his first match, Daniel, second with 200 grams followed by Leo who was third adding another trophy to his collection.

First in the Juniors was Henry McGarrah with 3 Kilo 260, and second Henry Wilsom with 1Kilo 470 grams, both representing Northampton Nene AC.

One of our Luton Juniors, Jack O’Brien who took third summed up his day saying he started off on a groundbait line feeding squat and fishing pinkie and had 5 small fish there in the whole first half of the match. He then fished another line right over on chopped worm whilst firing over casters which, once it got started, fished quite well. Jack caught at a steady pace with 1 bream 2 perch and a skimmer. Jack also hooked a bigger bream but unfortunately lost it after a bit of a fight, which cost him second place in the Juniors. He summed it up by saying that overall, he found it a very challenging day. Jack ended the day with 1Kilo 230 grams.

Fourth in the Juniors was Luton’s Indy Price with 560 grams, who also won the most promising Junior award for the diligent way he fished on Sunday, well done Indy.

The trophies and Daiwa prize presentation was done by John Ellis of CRT, the brains behind the ‘Let’s Fish‘ project, the best program out there for getting young people on the bank fishing.

A very well done to all who fished on Sunday, and a big thanks to all those who gave up their time to help run a very successful event which everyone enjoyed.

Daiwa - Let's Fish Regional Celebration

Wednesday Group Match Report 21st May 2025 - Yasi’s at How End

This week, We fished Yasi’s lake at How End. The temperature as we met in the car park on an overcast morning was 10C, however, the overcast lifted, and the day turned bright, warm and fine, very different to the rain on the weather forecast!

Yasi’s had good colour, with silt clouds visible, and fish could be seen topping as we made our way to the pegs after the draw.

Richard Gibbs was lucky to have drawn the fancied peg 11, and it didn't disappoint. He fed two lines. His first was a pole line at 13m against the island and a nearside line to his left. Feeding 2 mm fishery micros to the island, he started to catch after about half an hour using Fjuka 6mm wafters on the hook, and then it was Barbel city for about an hour and a half. He then went down the edge and caught a few silvers until a largish skimmer snagged him into the submerged pipe and trashed the pole rig. He then changed to a small method feeder against the island, alternating between wafters and dead reds as hook bait and started to catch Carp and the occasional Barbel until the end of the match. Richard finished first with 57lb 1oz.

Steve Lathwell took second, fishing a pole 13 .5 meters to the island mud line in 10 inches of water Steve used 6 mm hard pellets banded on an 18 hook and pinging 4mm pellets over. He also had a margin swim and used dead reds over ground bait, catching skimmers and barbel to end with 51lb

Third place went to Andy Frankum with 46lb 10oz. Andy was fishing a pole, feeding ground bait and pellet to the left margin. He used sweetcorn on the hook in this swim and was catching silvers, and at the same time he was loose feeding pellet over to island. He alternated between swims again using corn and caught mainly carp in the far ‘Island’ swim.

Simon Foulkes had a lovely day catching 31lb 13oz of silver fish and finished in fourth place. Simon is pictured with his catch in the fishery weigh bucket (Note, no personal Keepnets, Landing Nets, weigh nets or mats are allowed at commercial fisheries for bio security reasons) we must use the equipment provided.

We had a nice day at How End, and we must pass our thanks to Pip, Tania, and Phil for making us welcome and to all those who helped with the admin and weigh in.

Results

1st Richard Gibbs 57lb 1oz

2nd Steve Lathwell 51lb 4oz

3rd Andy Francome 46lb 10oz

4th Simon Foulkes 31lb 13oz

5th Colin Holmes 28lb 5oz

6th Dave Ridley 25lb 9oz

7th Sean Leatherland 21lb 8oz

8th Mark Sessions 20lb 2oz

9th Les Burton 17lb 13oz

10th Dennis Hunt 17lb 7oz

11th Paul Carr 17lb 6oz

12th Terry Vickers 17lb 5oz

13th Richard Darbon 14lb 14oz

14th Roger Baker 9lb 2oz

Ray Burton DNW

Our next match is Wednesday 28th May. The venue for this has been changed from the program, and we will now fish Stanborough Lake in Welwyn. Draw at the venue car park at 8.30 as usual, fish 10am till 3pm. £6 venue peg fee, £5.00 optional pools plus £2.00 Luton pegging fee, Fish 10.00am – 3.00 pm.

For anyone thinking of joining us for the first time, please message us so we know you are coming before turning up. This will help us to manage the pegging of the venue

Please bring your club membership book with you as you will be asked to produce it for your first appearance.

Wednesday Match at How End

Wednesday Match at How End

If you would like to share a catch report from a Luton AC Water you can send reports and pictures via our facebook page and other social media accounts, the club website or via what’s app message to 07940 229071. Don’t forget every picture we receive is automatically entered into our monthly photo prize which is judged by the committee and you could win £25.00. It’s not always the biggest fish that wins so well worth sending in any of your catch reports. Tight Lines Until Next Week! Dave M Luton AC

Luton Angling Club Weekly News Report for the Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire & St Neots Cambridgeshire Area - Bank Holiday Edition 26th May 2025

No comments:

Post a Comment