Marsh AC Tylers Common Willow Lake 19.05.2018

It seems that I have been spending a lot of time in the garage lately. It all started packing gear ready for a week at Weston Pools, come back and replace it all for a pleasure day at Meadowlands before switching it all around again for the trip to Tyler's Common today.Oh the joys.

So Tyler's Common, I picked Mick up for the relative local trip to Brentwood, home to the Konchi's Pie and Mash shop that happens to do a cracking breakfast. The venue is only about 10 minutes away.

View from peg 14

We had booked Willow Lake for the day, 14 anglers plus one guest, Malc Doyle,the Jinx himself. So with pools paid it was off to peg it out. Both Mick and I managed to peg it so everyone had a bit of room 2 pegs miss one and so on.Whilst doing the pegging we did notice it was absolutely black with fish in the early pegs, the wind was blowing into this bank, so this may have been the reason. The draw placed Mick on peg 8, in amongst the black stuff, whilst I was going for a walk to the opposite bank, peg 14 and as far as possible away from the cruising fish.

Chairman Dave has Rod's ear

My plan for the day was to catch as many fish as possible shallow before switching to the edges later in the session. We had been told there may be a need for a mid match weigh in so hopefully that is when I would switch.

I made up two shallow rigs to cover 12 inches and 18 inches, differing hook lengths one with a B911F1 hook in size 16 the other a size 18 B911X. I also set up a long line mugging rig. I also set up a couple of margin rigs to fish both sides on a top kit. Bait were pellets, pellets and pellets, 4s 6s and 8s were all on my tray and plenty of them.

 Tony Roberts - Why is my barrow in the lake?

At the all in I started on the shallow rigs, feeding a few pellets and dropping the rig in amongst them, I managed a couple of fish but there did not seem to be enough fish competing for the bait. Upping the feed made little difference as I was having to wait for a bite after the feed had gone past the hookbait. I could hear Clive and John both catching well and felt as if I was going nowhere. I could even see Mick and Simon in the distance playing fish each time I looked up. An earlier than expected look down the edges proved a good move as I nicked a couple of fish from the left hand topkit and a couple of fish from the right. I would then try shallow again for 10 minutes before trying again, this time nothing to the left and another couple of fish from the right. I was now getting into a rhythm and rotating my lines, however two of the lines were not producing so needed to start another couple. I added another couple of sections to both my margin lines and hoped these would prove fruitful.

Troy preparing his meat

The Watkins Brothers -It was this big? Honest

Everyone on the lake could hear Tony R and Troy talking amongst themselves, I had this on pellet, I had that on corn, it was quite funny listening in. It seemed that the double pegging made for little two peg battles separate from the main match, no one angler was running away with it.

I just managed to get my head down and was now rotating my right hand edge lines, topkit, top three and top four, nicking odd fish from one and moving the rotation. At the all out I estimated I had around the ton mark and a quick chat with Clive, he reckoned around the same, it would be close.

Overall

1st Mick Wright 143-00

2nd Simon Watkins 142-00

3rd Tony Roberts 141-12

4th Troy Hillyer 130-08

5th John Holdsworth 119-00

6th Keith Ashby 109-00

Bagging pegs 7 and 8

Well done to Mick, Tony and John on the section wins.
The lake was very consistent and fair to be honest, I think we knew in advance which pegs were going to frame, although not in which order. I also stated previously that I did not like the lakes which was unfair, The lakes are fine, although a lot of the fish are in poor condition. What I did not enjoy was the amount of pleasure anglers walking around trying to find a peg or moving around from lake to lake.

Mick 5
Keith 3