Willow Park Fishery. The Small Lake. June 12th, 2004.

Well, It was off to Willow Park Fishery for me to fish in the TalkAngling/ForceBaits southern qualifier, which was a match within a match, organised by Dave (Pikey) Pearson from the Total Fishing site, and another chance to catch up with, and put some names to faces from the Intersite series. After a leisurely trip down and a full English in the on site café, a dip into the draw bag saw me wandering round to peg 25 on the Little Lake.

Peg 25 A brief chat with Kenny Collings told me that there would be a few to be caught, but not to expect too much from the area.

An 11am start meant that there was plenty of time to set up and get comfy and with peg 24 on my left empty, I fancied that I may be able to tempt a couple of lumps into the margins later on. An almost constant depth of 4½ft from 5 to 14mtrs meant that I opted for a main swim at a comfortable 9mtrs with another at 13, and rigs covering both depth and shallow were set up. The margins would be covered with a heavy meat rig set up on my margin pole.
There is a limit of just one kilo of groundbait and this was Sillybait® and crumb in the hope that the fishmeal would hold both the Skimmers and Carp. I also brought 1kg of micro pellets for loose feeding from the shop as there is a rule that only allows 1kg of the fisheries own pellets to be fed though any pellet can be used as hookbait. Hookbaits were various flavours of both 6 & 4mm expanders, meat both plain and flavoured, paste and some worms.

At the off I wanted to be positive so cupped 2 large pots of micros and loose Sillybait® in on both the 9 & 13 mtr lines and 2 pots into both margins along with some meat.
After about 30 minutes of alternating between 9 & 13mtrs, the first bite came at 9 and I was greeted by the site of a “Flying” Skimmer doing a fair impression of a Trout. Around 1pm Beebs put in a appearance for a bit of a chat which was appreciated, even though I did my best to smack him round the ear with both the pole and landing net as I landed a couple of fish.

Despite spraying plenty of micros to attract the larger Carp that were cruising around all day, the up in the water rigs produced virtually nothing for me on the day, in common with the majority of anglers who reported a similarly frustrating experience of watching large Carp cruising through their swims and showing no interest.

The margin swims? another disappointment. Going into the final hour 1st put in with meat and the float buried resulting in a suicidal Perch determined to choke itself to death on a piece of meat only marginally smaller than itself. Each following attempt resulting in another of its siblings taking up the challenge.

At the all out 16lbs 10ozs of Skimmers & F1′s meant that I had beaten the 5 anglers to my left, but had lost out to the anglers to my right. Still a good day out and nice to catch up with some of the lads from other sites.

Next Saturday it’s back down that way to Gold Valley for the J Sainsbury National Championship, can I beat my 4th place from last season? I’ll let you know.