Worked on swim 1 today and finished filling it with chalk boulders.
Redid the small sleepers allowing the bivvie to go foward a few more feet and managed to get some dirt on it. Theres still a lot of dirt to go on it,but you can now walk to the front of the swim.
Gold star goes to brits who came down for a walk and ended up helping me all day until dark. I've never seen the boy work so hard,i could not keep up with him on the shovel.
Big effort by everyone involved in building this swim ,and it is looking the nuts.
Hardcore Bal came down before dark and delivered three 10ft trees and has got three more to come down tomrrow,so another gold star goes to him.
I fished last night and managed to burn of all the unwanted decaying timber around the container and to my surprise ,i only went and caught a fishy.
The fish was a paul middleton fully scaled that went in 14 months ago at 9.10lb, and i had it at 11.14lb, a wieght gain of 2.4lb


N

Forgot to mention, another gold star goes to Paul Bridgeman who came down with some more sleepers last weekend. He has supplied us with quite a few sleepers which are always difficult to get hold of. If it wasn't for his efforts we would not of been able to even start swim 1.
I was going to give him two gold stars if not for the moody colour of the last lot of sleepers

We all knew Brits had it in him to work, maybe he was conserving his energy on those other work parties to prepare for his day with Kev.
The new sleepers could be used to mark out a landing strip at the gorge and we could make some side cash as Chafford Hundred International Airport.

gotta move the bloody things again, but no swim1 looks brilliant and brits was covered in mud never seen him so dirty after work party

Busy work party today with 17 people helping out!
Swim 1 is now bark chipped and wide enough to park a bus in (see: Transit) this will be the hot swim again next season.
Cuz's / swim13 has been re-built and is now covered in earth and will be fishable in a few weeks time.
The container area and container have been tidied and sorted. Matt Britles was on fire duty supervised by Jamie who made sure Matt didn't burn his fingers.
It was good. It was like a party, but we were doing work. Like a work party. Yeah.

gonna be a windy one tomorrow

The work party today has been cancelled due to bad weather.
It will now be moved to next sunday 7th march. Sorry for any inconvenience.
We need someone with a tow bar next week so that we can move the trailer filled with dirt and barkchip to the woods end to finish swim 19.

Fantastic turn out today with plenty of jobs being finished off. A lot of the swims were bark chipped and generally tidied up. The front of the woods swim was repaired and the other double in the woods was finished and planted with some reeds. Swim one was desnagged a bit more ready for the rope to be taken out and jamie removed some rubbish floating in the reeds opposite the point.
Big thanx to mase who supplied a small tipper truck which enabled us to really get on today and thanx to paul bridgman again for getting us the sleepers to build the swims.
Today was the concluding w/party for the season just gone and looking back over the last year we have achieved a great deal of work.
The summer months were concerntrated on cleaning the lake from snags rubbish and tyres and also managed to get some lillies in. As we moved into the autumn and through till now, we have rebuilt four swims and only have three more to build.
The gorge is looking better each year and is more pleasurable to fish and the committee would like to thank everyone for there efforts over the last season. Members have really pulled together this season and the place is looking the nuts, role on the 9th april

Thankyou to the 13 members that turned up at todays workparty. This was a good turn out and we managed to complete a few little jobs around the lake. The fence was repaired at swim one end ready for the vandals to smash up again. The parking area by the bollard was extended a bit more to comfortable fit one extra car. Some lillies that were still in there pots from last year were planted. Tidied up containor area strimmed down the weeds and planted three tree's.
Now these jobs are out the way we are going to rebuild the willow swim that is collapsing into the lake. This job will be done at the next workparty and may cause a bit of inconvenience as it is a popular swim. We can only do this job when it is hot as we will probably have to get in the water to do it. The next work party is on 27th june from 9am, and it is probably best not to fish this swim the night before .

If you are planning on coming to tomorrows workparty, bring a rake if you can. The weed is coming up and needs raking out of the lake from the margins, cheers

Workparty on sunday, rebuilding the willow swim amongst other jobs. Willow swim shouldn't really be fished saturday night unless you are prepared to get off early sunday morning. I will be there about 9am alcohol permitting.

Willow swim was rebuilt today. It was an awkward job to do but we got it done in the end. Thanks to those that helped and thanks to ronnie for the fish bait for the traps. Thanks also to nick for making the weed rake . Willow swim needs a bit more top soil on it and some barkchip to finish it off, but is still fishable.