With a Leatherhead DAS club match on the Small Lake at Willow Park looming, I made the most of a rare fishing trip with my brother to get in a bit of practice the friday before.
My brother Martin (or McPikey) as he is known on the Total Fishing.com website has lived in Scotland since he was originally based there in the Royal Navy a long long time ago. He has only recently returned properly to fishing after 30 years or so and whenever he pops down to the sunny south, we try to get in a few trips or matches.
The Small Lake at Willow Park has always been one of my favourite lakes to fish and even more so now you can catch loads of fish on PASTE ! Friday morning arrived and despite only arriving at my parents house on Epsom Downs at 5.30am after driving down from Scotland over night, Martin was still keen to go and duly picked me up at 9am as agreed.
The weather was typical of this summer with wind and rain, so arriving at the lakes, we picked pegs 9 and 11 near the cafe but more importantly with the wind behind us.
The day didn't start too well for me as first I discovered I had left my landing net at home, meaning I then had to shell out £10 for a new one and secondly, having tackled up, I went to deliver bait to Martin's peg and a sudden big gust of wind caught my brolly (which was attached to my box) and tipped the entire contents of two of the box drawers and all the bait on my side tray into the lake.
Nevertheless, after scooping as much of the floating gear out, I fed some GB and hemp at 5 metres and 9 metres, fished paste on the hook and caught carp and F1's all day. Martin had a slow start but I finally convinced him to take off the silly piece of corn he was fishing with and to put on a big blob of proper bait on the hook and from then on he caught a few fish including a nice "Barney Rubble".
Match day arrived and with only 16 pegs in, and the pegging nicely spread out, I didn't really care which peg I drew. So, in went the hand and out came ..........Peg 14, just to the right of the big Willow, and where did Big Bruv draw ? Peg 16 which was the next peg ! I think this was only the 4th match we've fished together recently and he's drawn right next to me twice !
Anyway, for company the other side I had Smiffy (Mark Smith) and with him being a renowned up in the water angler, I thought we might have an interesting little battle.
As per usual for me at Willow, I plumbed up two lines, one at 6 metres and one at 9 metres well away from each other and on the whistle fed two big pots of hemp and some pellets on the longer line and started to feed some very hard small balls of GB on the shorter line. We have christened this feeding pattern "Plopping" as that is the noise the ball makes as it hits the water. If it doesn't "Plop" then it isn't hard enough and will probably break up before hitting the bottom which often brings the fish up in the water, which is not where I want them. The rigs, as usual were Maver Margin 4x14 paste floats on 0.18 G Line - which may sound a bit OTT but I have found at Willow when fishing paste that the line diameter doesn't seem to make any difference and there are some BIG fish in there. The hook was a B911 size 10 and the elastic purple hydro. I did try fishing a lighter elastic (I think it was Preston 13h - if that is the dark green one) on friday but it was far too light.
Anyway Smiffy went off like a train at the next peg and I think probably had 6 fish in the net before I had my first bite on the 6 metre line. No I didn't believe it either, Smiffy catching on paste, whatever next !
Luckily for me he slowed down a bit, but after catching one more carp at 9 metres my peg just felt fishless and I decided to go out to 12 metres to see if that made a difference. I have found before here that the fish will sometimes not come in closer despite the minimal difference in depth between 6 and 12 metres. Even as an experienced "Plopper" I don't find it easy to feed small balls accurately at 12 metres, especially as I had over wetted the GB slightly and the force of them hitting the water at 12 metres was in danger of breaking them up too early. I therefore put three balls in my cupping kit and dropped them in from a height of about 6 foot - job done.
There seemed to be a few fish about on the longer line and I soon started to put a few fish in the net, mostly betweeen 2-4lb but including one double figure fish. As the match went on, a peg to peg battle developed between me and Smiffy as he kept trying his up inthe water line and I kept trying my 6 metre line but neither of us had much luck and both kept returning to our long paste lines to catch. He'd catch two or three whilst I struggled then the position would reverse and I'd get a few back. I did also try down the edge at one time but my only catch there was HALF A FLOWERPOT which did suprisingly give a decent bite and put up quite a good fight !
With 25 minutes to go, I trashed my rig and as always, I couldn't get the new one working properly and only added one more fish to my catch whilst Smiffy had 3 or 4.
When the whistle blew I thought it would be close between us although Smiffy thought I had beaten him by 20lb yeah right !
At the weigh in Smiffy weighed in 66lb - which inlcuded 15lb of skimmers whilst my net eventually weighed 74lb, and with Hathers finishing third with 41lb from Peg 26, was enough to take first place.
All in all another brilliant days fishing at Willow, I hate to think what the pressure is like in a World Championships or the Fisho Final as this was only a 16 peg club match with nobody watching and when Smiffy was catching and I wasn't, the pressure really seemed on to do something about it.
For any Pasteheads amongst you, my paste was just made from my the usual 3mmGreen Swim stim pellets with a couple of desert spoons of Garam Masala added.
The paste certainly DIDN'T include any Catfood which I had been accused of using at Willow Park last time by some very sad individual.
We're off to Lake 1 at Monk Lakes next sunday, pop back next week to see how we get on,
it could be Pikey V Smiffy round 2 !
My brother Martin (or McPikey) as he is known on the Total Fishing.com website has lived in Scotland since he was originally based there in the Royal Navy a long long time ago. He has only recently returned properly to fishing after 30 years or so and whenever he pops down to the sunny south, we try to get in a few trips or matches.
The Small Lake at Willow Park has always been one of my favourite lakes to fish and even more so now you can catch loads of fish on PASTE ! Friday morning arrived and despite only arriving at my parents house on Epsom Downs at 5.30am after driving down from Scotland over night, Martin was still keen to go and duly picked me up at 9am as agreed.
The weather was typical of this summer with wind and rain, so arriving at the lakes, we picked pegs 9 and 11 near the cafe but more importantly with the wind behind us.
The day didn't start too well for me as first I discovered I had left my landing net at home, meaning I then had to shell out £10 for a new one and secondly, having tackled up, I went to deliver bait to Martin's peg and a sudden big gust of wind caught my brolly (which was attached to my box) and tipped the entire contents of two of the box drawers and all the bait on my side tray into the lake.
Nevertheless, after scooping as much of the floating gear out, I fed some GB and hemp at 5 metres and 9 metres, fished paste on the hook and caught carp and F1's all day. Martin had a slow start but I finally convinced him to take off the silly piece of corn he was fishing with and to put on a big blob of proper bait on the hook and from then on he caught a few fish including a nice "Barney Rubble".
Match day arrived and with only 16 pegs in, and the pegging nicely spread out, I didn't really care which peg I drew. So, in went the hand and out came ..........Peg 14, just to the right of the big Willow, and where did Big Bruv draw ? Peg 16 which was the next peg ! I think this was only the 4th match we've fished together recently and he's drawn right next to me twice !
Anyway, for company the other side I had Smiffy (Mark Smith) and with him being a renowned up in the water angler, I thought we might have an interesting little battle.
As per usual for me at Willow, I plumbed up two lines, one at 6 metres and one at 9 metres well away from each other and on the whistle fed two big pots of hemp and some pellets on the longer line and started to feed some very hard small balls of GB on the shorter line. We have christened this feeding pattern "Plopping" as that is the noise the ball makes as it hits the water. If it doesn't "Plop" then it isn't hard enough and will probably break up before hitting the bottom which often brings the fish up in the water, which is not where I want them. The rigs, as usual were Maver Margin 4x14 paste floats on 0.18 G Line - which may sound a bit OTT but I have found at Willow when fishing paste that the line diameter doesn't seem to make any difference and there are some BIG fish in there. The hook was a B911 size 10 and the elastic purple hydro. I did try fishing a lighter elastic (I think it was Preston 13h - if that is the dark green one) on friday but it was far too light.
Anyway Smiffy went off like a train at the next peg and I think probably had 6 fish in the net before I had my first bite on the 6 metre line. No I didn't believe it either, Smiffy catching on paste, whatever next !
Luckily for me he slowed down a bit, but after catching one more carp at 9 metres my peg just felt fishless and I decided to go out to 12 metres to see if that made a difference. I have found before here that the fish will sometimes not come in closer despite the minimal difference in depth between 6 and 12 metres. Even as an experienced "Plopper" I don't find it easy to feed small balls accurately at 12 metres, especially as I had over wetted the GB slightly and the force of them hitting the water at 12 metres was in danger of breaking them up too early. I therefore put three balls in my cupping kit and dropped them in from a height of about 6 foot - job done.
There seemed to be a few fish about on the longer line and I soon started to put a few fish in the net, mostly betweeen 2-4lb but including one double figure fish. As the match went on, a peg to peg battle developed between me and Smiffy as he kept trying his up inthe water line and I kept trying my 6 metre line but neither of us had much luck and both kept returning to our long paste lines to catch. He'd catch two or three whilst I struggled then the position would reverse and I'd get a few back. I did also try down the edge at one time but my only catch there was HALF A FLOWERPOT which did suprisingly give a decent bite and put up quite a good fight !
With 25 minutes to go, I trashed my rig and as always, I couldn't get the new one working properly and only added one more fish to my catch whilst Smiffy had 3 or 4.
When the whistle blew I thought it would be close between us although Smiffy thought I had beaten him by 20lb yeah right !
At the weigh in Smiffy weighed in 66lb - which inlcuded 15lb of skimmers whilst my net eventually weighed 74lb, and with Hathers finishing third with 41lb from Peg 26, was enough to take first place.
All in all another brilliant days fishing at Willow, I hate to think what the pressure is like in a World Championships or the Fisho Final as this was only a 16 peg club match with nobody watching and when Smiffy was catching and I wasn't, the pressure really seemed on to do something about it.
For any Pasteheads amongst you, my paste was just made from my the usual 3mmGreen Swim stim pellets with a couple of desert spoons of Garam Masala added.
The paste certainly DIDN'T include any Catfood which I had been accused of using at Willow Park last time by some very sad individual.
We're off to Lake 1 at Monk Lakes next sunday, pop back next week to see how we get on,
it could be Pikey V Smiffy round 2 !
