By Mark Murdoch | No Comments
Last updated: Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Well what a fantastic weeks fishing I’ve just had. I fished three matches won 2 of them and came third in the other and picked up a few quid along the way. In all three matches I’ve had over a ton. Now that’s what I call fishing.

Tuesday was the monthly club match on Tylers Common in Essex. With 24 booked in it was going to be a nice match on Horseshoe with a bit of room. I had a walk with Calvin down to the lake and a quick walk around saw us fancying a draw around the teens on the outside of the bottom bend. Calvin likes to get his hand in early, which saw him pull out peg 13 which was pretty good and we both fancied it for a few fish. I pulled out peg 10 which was on the straight with the hill directly behind me.  I must admit I haven’t fished Tylers much so wasn’t too depressed with my peg and I had plenty of room as the next peg to my left was Calvin and I had Gary Rolfe two pegs to my right. Gary fishes Tylers quite a bit in the opens so he would be tough to beat.

For bait I’d brought six tins of corn, some pellets and some meat. I also had some paste with me. Tylers has islands running down the middle and plumbing up against the island at 16 metres I found the 18 inches of water that I wanted a foot off the island.  Here I was going to kinder cup meat and pellets and fish pellet on the hook. My rig was a 4×10 Trabucco CF8 with 0.14 T Line straight through to a size 16 Kamasan B911. My next line was going to be at 9 metres for paste and I also had a line at 4 metres for meat where I could throw meat whilst fishing elsewhere. Both rigs for these lines were Trabucco CF3’s to 0.16 T line with a 16 B911 on the meat and a 12 B911 for the paste. I also plumbed up two lines down the edge either side of me.

Just off the island in 18 inches of water was where I wanted to fish.

Next up was the open match on Colemans Cottage in Essex which is where the 1st round of the Drennan Super League is this Saturday. I’d brought Swanny with me to have a look at the place. He wasn’t going to fish but wanted to sit with me and also have a look how a few others were fishing it. With the open on both lakes, Pathfield and Wood I stood in the draw queue hoping for a peg on Pathfield as I had fished Wood the week before. In the bag and I pulled out peg 3 on Pathfield which most people told me hadn’t been fishing but I thought well I’ll see.

Peg 3 on Pathfield looked nice despite what the locals said.

I had the standard worm and caster and a bit of meat with me. To the island it was 16 metres but I decided to fish 14.5 and force the fish to come to me in slightly deeper water and give them somewhere to back off to.

Rigs were simple 4×10 KC Carpa Shelfs with a light rig on 0.14 Trabucco T Line to an 18 Gama Power hook and the heavier rig having the same float and hook but with 0.16 Trabucco T Line. On the lighter rig I had Black J Range Lastix and on the heavier Preston 15H.

Once the fish got their heads down I was regularly into carp.

The match started off well and I was catching silvers and the odd carp and then carp seemed to move in and bully all the silvers out the way other than the odd greedy carp. I fished a worm head on the hook and caught steadily all match to weigh in 129lb for third overall. Derek Gladwin won the match with over 150lb on Wood Lake but put a few too much in one net and had a bit deducted. The net limit is 70lb and if you’re over that you get double what you are over deducted. Make sense! Well I was lucky as one of my nets had 69lb 8oz in it. How’s that for luck because it certainly wasn’t judgment. Simon Colclough had 134lb on Pathfield Lake for second overall. I was quite happy with my match as it was the first time I’d fished Pathfield and was happier with the fact I had a sort of plan in my head for the Super league. As well as that I was also back to Surrey with a few more pound notes in my pocket.

My third match of the week was the Sussex Summer League match at Monks Lakes in Kent. Having fished it the other week I was prepared with maggots as I thought it was going to be hard and my plan was to catch anything that was there and if the carp were there they would push the small silvers out. Mark Smith drew for the team and the card showed me on peg 66 on Lake 2. meant no a lot to me but when I spoke to a few people they said it was end peg on the spit and should be ok for a few fish. When I got to the peg I really fancied it as I could reach across to the far bank of the lake and the wind was gently pushing down the lake towards me. I set up to fish out in front of me to start and then planned to go across to the edge after an hour or so in an attempt to let the fish settle in the shallow water. I shouldn’t have bothered as I had a few short but when I went down the edge I realized that all the fish were there and I fished the remainder of the match there. I fished banded 6mm pellet on a hair shallow and at depth along the edge feeding via a kinder pot hard 3mm pellets. In four hours I got through 6 pints via the kinder pot fishing a 4×10 KC Carpa Bully to 0.18 T Line to a size 16 Kamasan B911. I used black J Range Lastix and a pulla bung to end up weighing 121lb 12oz to win the match and importantly score top section points.

The Trabucco XPS HP Allrounder Pole has been put through a serious workout this week.It’s come through with flying colours.

Dean Lock of Surrey Starlets finished 2nd with 110lb 7oz on the opposite bank and I think he fed around 10 pints of pellets. Yes there are loads of fish in Monks and they like a bit of bait. Team wise we had finished equal 3rd on the day with Surrey Starlets with the DELCAC teams coming 1st and 2nd.

All in all a good week for me though, and I’m looking forward to the Drennan Super League at Colemans Cottage as it really is a top fishery.

I’ll give you a run down of how we got on next week.