It was back to Willinghurst on Sunday for the first round of the always popular Willinghurst Masters although this year with the fishing not being good, I was surprised to find that we still had 9 teams of 6 wanting to fish. Having pegged Oaktree and Cherrytree lakes on Saturday afternoon and based on recent results, the lake I fancied drawing was Oaktree but only 6 of the nine pegs ! Yes, I know it sounds fussy but being the organisor, you’d think I should be able to have a decent peg wouldn’t you !This year with my Leatherhead team not entering a team – Smiffy hibernates and the others go and fish rivers and silver fish matches, I joined up with Alan Harrington and a few of his team for the series. Oh yes, Haisman (Pictured above), couldn’t find anyone who was desperate enough to have him and not wanting to see a grown man cry, I bribed Alan into letting him fish with us as well ! And, what a good decision that proved to be !
Come match day and Alan was third to draw, missing out on the favoured Pegs 1, 4 and 5, he drew the 9 Ball and as I wrote down the teams pegs I fortunately missed being on New Lake and finally got to ….Dave Pearson – Oaktree Peg 9, right lake wrong bit !!!
My peg on was on the newly dug bit of the lake and despite not looking too promising, I still thought I’d catch a few fish. The far bank was 14 metres away so I set up a light rig to fish corn across for carp and another couple of rigs to fish in the middle both left and right. I cupped in some GB on one line along with a few maggots as this is how they had been catching recently and a few maggots on the other. After 3 hours without a bite, most of the others were catching a few fish, except for Malcolm Heaver to my left , Reg the Edge opposite and Tony Yianni next to him. Out of boredom, I decided to set up a waggler mainly cos it is easier to hold a rod than a pole and it would also give me the flexibility to have a chuck around hoping to land my bait infront of a fish. Half an hour of waggler fishing proved fruitless until the wind caught the line and dragged the float along a few inches. At his point the float submerged and whilst I’m sure it was just dragging on the bottom, my instinct was to strike. A couple of seconds later, a small fish surfaced and I then reeled in sooooo slowly whilst praying that it wouldn’t drop off, the fish was finally in range and being brave I swang it straight in. Enclosed in my hot sweaty hand was a 2 inch perch firmly hooked in the eye ! At this point I let out a large cheer and gave some abuse to those who were still blanking.
Pete Franklin on Peg 1 in the rushes had caught a few carp (and had one break his pole), whilst Terry Molloy, Mick Keeper and Mick Fitzpatrick had all caught a few fish around the island and deeper water. On the whistle I quickly packed away and waited for Terry Bolton to pick me up in the buggy (that’s one of the benefits of being the organisor) to take me back to the cabin. I’ve found in the past that if I get a quick lift back, then I can sort out all the money before the boards start coming back with the weights on and this speeds up the results considerably.
I usually leave my bulging nets for someone else to weigh in but on this occasion they agreed to give me an ounce for my perch (quite generous really as I think it was probably half that) but it made no difference to anyone else as the only people I’d beaten were the two blankers, Malcolm and Reg.
With the money counted and in it’s envelopes the boards started to filter back. Our lake was very tight with the weights looking like this:-
Peg 1 Pete Franklin 24-4-0
Peg 2 Reg The Edge DNW
Peg 3 Tony Yianni 7-14-0
Peg 4 Mick Fitzpatrick 28-2-0
Peg 5 Mick Keeper 29-2-0
Peg 6 Terry Molloy 25-6-0
Peg 7 Jeff Dickinson 2-0-0
Peg 8 Malcolm Heaver DNW
Peg 9 Dave Pearson 0-1-0
Dave Bacon won the match from Horseshoe Lake peg 7 with 35-14-0 (two double figure carp and some F1’s) on a 13 metre pole with corn / pellet, followed by Mick Keeper and Mick Fitzpatrick.
Team wise, it was a debut victory for the “Boys” from Guildford Angling Centre who made good use of their Peg 1 draw and all their practicing to tie with Don Garnish’s “Foxy Five” team at the top of the table with 37 pts, closely followed by Barry Goddard’s “All Sorts” team on 36.5. Alan’s Upbeats finished in 6th place aided and abetted by Haisman our new wonder signing who “fished his nuts off” on Peg 20 on New Lake and BLANKED ! To make his day complete, he also had to give me a pound for the battering I gave him.
