The Unkown Common at 77 pounds

Island Lake October 2011

We were on a real high coming off Telliates and went straight to Island lake 15km down the road for our second week of the holiday.

I had heard it was a weedy lake that was a little tricky . After borrowing the van from Jake the bailiff at Telliates to get to the draw for 11am and rushing around the super market for some food for the week I evetually was in swim 13 on Island lake . Steve I put in swim 12 on bailiffs advice . Steve was now on his way back to Dover to pick up his van !!!!
As soon as i looked over the side of the boat in swim 13 i knew this wasn't going to be easy. Crystal clear water and i could see boilies at 12 feet down . The clear areas and recommended spots were huge and i just couldn't see me getting a bite in the day here. I found a spot along a tree line that reminded me of a great spot on the Anson back in the day at Dartford lakes. Tree line clear and it was polished , that will do nicely and it was shaded most of the day . The other two went on very obvious spots , huge clear areas that had been cleaned by carp .
Steve arrived at 2am , after a cuppa and a fag , I got three bleeps on the tree line rod , went down to the rod and it was curved around nicely . It was on and turned out to be another 60 common. Lucky or what .
It turned out to be a hard week with only six fish caught by 7 anglers . We had four of them . 60.4 Common and 55 common to me and a 55 Mirror and 38 mirror to Steve.

Telliates Oct 2011

Just got back from another amazing trip and a near copy of last October for Steve and I . Steve managed to pull the number 1 ball from the hat , I got 8 . Tim Oatley and his crew had been on the previous week with Tim catching the Nogent Mirror at 78 ,again . New Biffos had done a few fish in the last 24 hrs , so as he left on the coach he gave me the , New Biffos , New Biffos message for the draw.
Steve stuck to his guns after seeing a catch graph of the double swim with all the big 6 coming from there this year . Nice one Steve , I had to wait and went for the Shithouse . I could have gone in the Crescent or the Fence but saw the colour of the water in Shithouse and a fish show. Game on.

We set up and I went for a spot at around 85 yds that Steve had done well on last year and a deeper spot to the right. Steve went on the spot I had 2X60 last year and the famous rock spot where Si Haldane has done so well . I put 2kg on one spot and 1 kg on the other and was surprised to get a take at 10.30pm . 43 pounder, another at 3.30 am 44 pounder , and Steve had a 38 a first light. Blimey we never catch first night.
I won't bore you all with the detail but we ended up with 17 fish . 1x77 Common , 2x60 Common , 1 x61 Mirror, 3x55 Plus. All caught on Mainline New Grange . We used around 50kg during the week . Another awesome week on the lake and a memorable year for me with 6x60 including 3x70 plus.