Sunday 9th November 2008

This weekends report starts on Friday afternoon, where with a Leatherhead DAS club match on my local stretch of the River Mole looming a quick reckie was in order. Those of you who have known me for a long long time will know that far from being just a commercial fisheries angler who likes to fish paste at 6 metres, I was infact not a bad small river angler (even if I do say so myself) !

I actually grew up fishing the River Mole and probably spent as much time there as I now do at Willinghurst. This was helped by the fact that the River is probably less than a mile from my house !

Although I wanted to fish the club match there this sunday, the british weather forecasters had been doing there best to put me off with the threat of continuous rain for three days. However, by friday afternoon the threatened deluge had still not arrived.

Having finished at the Wildlife centre by 1 pm I turned right out of the drive, along the bridlepath, across the river, through Fetcham village (stopping briefly at the bakers for a pie and carton of drink), then up the road, past the leisure centre and I was soon at the bottom end of the Leatherhead DAS stretch.

Since my early days fishing the river, the pegs have all had names relating to either features in the peg or those that often fished them. As I reached the bridge, the memories came flooding back of fish I had caught and matches I had fished. Making my way upstream I passed the middle bush and bottom pool, when I reached the pipe swim I remembered winning a number of matches by poking a long pole over to a little slack on the far bank and then onwards and upwards to Rogers Swim where many winters ago I had a good run of results in the cold of winter by lobbing out a large chunk of mothers pride bread for chub nets of 20-30lb.

The first peg in the copse was my next stop, an out and out trotting peg where you just had to persevere and keep trotting and feeding as the chub lay somewhere in the copse and sometimes needed time to move up the peg on to your bait. I've known loads of anglers pack up fishless after a couple of hours and I've also caught 10 chub in 10 casts after not catching for 4 hours before so it's certainly a peg to fish until the end of the match.

Carrying on up river, another couple of decent looking swims were the armchair and the cattle drink before I reached probably the most consistent peg on the stretch......The carp swim.

I don't think anyone has actually caught a carp from it for probably 25 years but in the old days you could usually catch one or two 2lb carp - which often helped you to frame, hence it's name. Whilst no carp are caught there now, it does produce not only chub and roach but also the odd bream and Irvine Eastwood also had a 9lb barbel out of it the other season.

With the river looking in superb condition, I raced home and rang Andy at Apollo Angling to order two pints of their finest casters for the following day. However, as I put the phone down I noticed the first spot of rain on the lounge window !

In the evening I rang Peter Turnbull to book in for the river match only to find that there were likely to be only 5 or 6 anglers fishing ! I was now in two minds if to fish the river or go to Willinghurst where at least I knew there would be a half decent turnout. My mind was finally made up on saturday when the threatened rain finally arrived with a vengeance and the river was likely to be up and rising the following day.

Sunday morning arrived and armed with two pints of casters (that I didn't relly want but took cos I had ordered them) along with my usal bait list, we arrived at Willinghurst to find a very windy day was in store with wind speeds of 35 MPH ! Drawing Peg 26 on the back spit I was a bit disappointed to find that Peg 27 was also pegged as it meant that I wouldn't be able to chuck towards the island that I caught near on wednesday. With the lake having risen by 5 inches following saturdays rain I decided that my best chance of success would be to fish with catfood as I thought a smelly bait was likely to be more successful. I Plumbed up to fish catfood at 12 metres in front of me and pellet at 14 metres at 10 o'clock, I also set up two edge rigs to fish catfood.

At the start, I cupped in a little bit of slop (catfood pushed through a riddle) on the cat food lines and pinged a few pellets over the other line but after two hours I was still biteless and with the wind getting stronger it was now impossible to fish one of the long lines and I was restricted to fishing the 10 o'clock line as it was slightly downwind. My first walk revealed that young Ben Emery on Peg 4 was probably winning with 4 carp, Haisman was getting all excited about taking my pound from Peg 13 as he already had 3 carp and a couple of others had one or two fish. Arriving back at my peg I was a little bored with the fishing to say the least so decided to fish a rig at 5 metres with the superb casters I had loads of to bag up with roach and rudd........... but gave up after 45 minutes as I hadn't had a bite !

Another biteless hour followed, despite Mick Keeper (or Wicket as Don likes to call him) catching 3 or 4 fish at the next peg ! Walk number two took me round the whole lake and by this time it looked like Ben was going to win as he led with 5 carp, Haisman had 4 but now couldn't get a bite (personally I think he cocked his peg up but didn't like to say !) and Mark Price in Peg 2 had 4 or 5 fish.

Returning to my peg, it had now started to rain and I decided to just sit it out fishing catfood for the remainder of the match. After ten minutes I had my first carp, a decent fish of about 8lb then the wind started to get stronger and stronger and next cast I thought my pole was going to snap as I foulhooked a decent fish that swam off to my right and with the wind blowing the other way, the pole took on an alarming S shape. Luckily I managed to drop the pole on to the water and although the fish eventually came off, at least my pole was still in one piece.

Two more fish followed in the next half hour but with half an hour to go it was impossible to fish the pole at all and most just lobbed out a lead whilst packing up the rest of their gear.

I have to say that I wasn't too upset to hear the final whistle but was cheered considerably when Haisman's 4 carp went 21lb and my 3 pulled the needle round to 24-4-0 as his pound coin is now located in my back pocket !

Result

Ben Emery Peg 4 49-0-0

Mick Keeper Peg 25 43-8-0

Mark Price Peg 2 27-12-0

Ian Summers Peg 8 27-4-0

I haven't heard how the club match went yet but I expect they will have switched it to the club lakes round the corner from my house !

Next week is Round 4 of my Winter League at Willinghurst - can Pikey's Six hold on to the top spot or will Don's Foxy Five take over - all will be revealed next monday !