If you read my last offering you will have noticed that my little wander along the River Mole to see the weigh in had recharged my river fishing batteries and I couldn't wait to get back there this week for the Leatherhead DAS V Dorking V Warlingham inter club match on the Dorking stretch of the River Mole. Well unfortunately whilst it was nice to have a few milder days, this did cause a little bit of a problem with the river level (as you can see from the picture Mrs Pikey took this morning).
Anyway, I had received a call from Terry Molloy late in the week saying that he had a Silvers Match "organised" for the match lake at Sumners Pond on Sunday if I was interested. It wasn't until he'd put the phone down that I remembered that he fishes the Rushmoor League at Gold Valley so I could guess who would be running the Sumners match ! I never mind organising matches but Terry's matches are always a bit traumatic to run as he usually tells you that 12 people will be fishing and 17 turn up ! And that's exactly what happened on Sunday and we also had only one bank as the Guildford Mafia were having their Christmas Match on the other. However, as the lake was covered in about 3 inches of ice, we could put the pegs a bit closer together than usual and having pegged out the length, the main consideration was to try and draw a peg that had been cut out the day before as it meant that you would only have to cut 1/4 inch of ice and the second consideration was to try and draw a peg between 1 and 9 as they were in the big bay where the majority of silvers seemed to have moved to.
Having organised the draw, I was left with Peg 11 which had Bubs one side and Brian Wharton the other, so at least I knew I wouldn't be last ! I wasn't sure if the peg had been fished the day before but let out a big cheer as I neared my peg half way along the second island to find that there was a lovely channel cut in the ice to about 10 metres. Although I could cut the channel out with my weedcutter attached to the end of my pole, I also wanted to fish a short line at about 6 metres so out came the ice breaker and I soon had a decent inside line to my left as well as a long line infront.
As the match started, it soon began clear that the majority of silvers were located in the deep bay in pegs 1-8 but my decision to fish caster instead of maggot or pinkie soon began to pay off as I started to catch some bigger roach. Suprisingly I could only catch on the shorter line - maybe because I hadn't thrown the ice breaker on the long line and stirred up the bottom like I had closer in. Anyway, for the first time for a long while, the sun shone (I even took my fleece and jumper off) and everyone seemed to be catching a fish or two.
On the whistle I grabbed the scales and made my way up to Peg one to start the weigh in. From the weights, you could see that the bay was the place to be as the Top six weights went like this:-
Result
Ben Emery..............Peg 2.............9-7-0
Tony Yianni............Peg 7.............7-13-0
Mick Keeper...........Peg 4.............6-14-0
Don Garnish...........Peg 5.............6-13-0
Dave Pearson.........Peg 11...........6-11-0
Jason.......................Peg 8.............5-8-0
As match organiser for the day I was gutted that I decided to pay just the Top 4 and no sections as I finished 5th and would have won the second section, although at least I took a pound off Plummers as once again he discovered that tangerine sized bits of paste are useless for roach fishing in Winter !
Last Sunday looked half decent weather wise so it was off to Sumners Pond again but this time on the Ribbon Lake which is full of Skimmers, roach, little crucians, smallish tench (although there is the odd bigger one to keep you on your toes), small chub and the odd rudd.
Having only fished the lake a few times, I don't think anyone really knows which areas you want to draw and whilst I wasn't really worried about which peg I drew, the were a couple of people that I'd rather not have drawn next to, and they were....................
Steve Gardener - Cos he always gives me a good beating on silvers matches.
Terry Molloy - Cos he usually gives me a good beating AND ear ache on all matches.
Ben Emery - Or Windy Ben as he is known !
John Holt - A very nice man, but he is from up North and I can never understand anything he says.
Sam Sim (I think) - A young lady I've not fished with before but (not wishing to sound sexist) nobody likes to be beaten by a girlie !
Anyway, into the draw bag went the hand and out came Peg 1, with Terry Molloy on Peg 2 (Luckily I had my headache tablets with me). The good thing was that with Plummers on Peg 3, we could park right behind our pegs and only had a very short walk. Tactics wise, I decided to fish to the island with caster, hoping to catch chub / roach and in the deeper water infront of me with pellett for the skimmers. To cut a long story short it fished quite hard, I had a few early roach and a bonus rudd and tench both of about half a pound but the rest of my catch consisted of mainly roach. Despite some good mickey tacking in the first couple of hours when I was catching and Terry wasn't, in the second half of the match he gave me a lesson in Skimmer fishing (I'm really crap at it) and walked the match with 17lb. I wasted an hour or more fishing for skimmers which I wasn't good enough to catch and when I switched back to fishing by the island with an hour to go I started to catch again.
Starting at Peg 13 and weighing back to me, the early weights were 4lbish then Mick Keeper weighed 5-8-0 and got all excited cos he beat Steve G (4-14-0) off the next peg ! Ben then took the lead with 6-2-0 until Kevin pipped him with 7-10-0, which included a 3lb tench.
I was more concerned about my pound with Plummers but when he weighed 3-11-0 I knew I was safe with my net finally settling the scales on 6-7-0.
Result
Terry Molloy...........Peg 2...............17-0-0
Kevin........................Peg 4................7-10-0
Dave Pearson.........Peg 1.................6-7-0
Ben Emery..............Peg 5................6-2-0
Mick Keeper...........Peg 7................5-8-0
Steve Gardener.....Peg 6................4-14-0
So once again, an enjoyable winters day with a few bites for everyone. Next weekend I am fishing at Sumners on the Match (Carp ) Lake and as it seems like the fish have woken up after the big freeze, I'm hoping to catch a carp or two.
