Bank Holiday Monday – 28th May 2007
Brrr it’s nearly June and today it’s tipped it down with rain all day. When you combine that with a strong North Easterly wind you get BRRR (that’s 6 degrees C in normal language).
It’s been a very strange weekend at Willinghurst, as the weather got worse, the fishing got better. Going back to Saturday, Molesey had another of their league matches on the Top Lake. Malcolm Fowler won it from peg 25 on the back spit with 85 lbs but weights were terrible, with only 42 lb needed for third place. The open match on Saturday was held on Horseshoe and Pittance lakes. Pittance hadn’t been match fished since the winter so those lucky souls that drew it were full of trepidation. They needn’t have worried, the top 5 weights came from that lake with Steve Collins winning the match with 107 lbs.
The Sunday match was on Top and New lakes, and the general opinion was that you needed to draw New lake to have any chance of winning. That turned out to be true, with the top 2 weights coming from that lake. In an exciting finish the Cod just beat Delbert by one fish (127 lb vs 120 lb). Peg 12 on Top lake (the blue pipe peg) came good with a fine weight of 106 lb from Micky Fitz for third place overall. There were quite a few other seventy and eighty pound weight from Top lake, a big improvement on the previous day.
Today’s match was fished in conditions worse than a normal winters day but the fish were again in the mood to feed. The match was on Top lake and again the blue pipe took top honours. Peter Turnbull fished paste at 5 metres to catch steadily throughout the day for a very good weight of 130 lbs 8 ozs. there were two other “tons” and plenty of good backing weights from both the main lake and the spit. It seemed like the cold rain actually sent the fish down to the bottom where they were happy to feed, a welcome change from the swirls and foul hookers of the last few weeks. Let’s hope that the fish now stay down there and we’ll all get some good fishing.
This rain is doing wonders for the recently dredged Old lake. The water level is now about 18″ below the banks. I’ll take a couple of piccys when I’m there on Wednesday to let you see the progress.