Last Wednesday I fished the Avon Angling Open at Landsend, I was pretty pissed off afterwards and couldn't find the motivation to write about it and it wouldn't have been an interesting read if I had. I drew peg 10 and struggled to catch, even on caster or maggot.
A weekend away from fishing last weekend, spent at Cropredy (Fairport Convention's Festival), it was great, good beer, good food and decent music.
So back to the fishing and I couldn't believe what presented itself when I opened the swimcard, peg 81 for the 3rd time this summer. With what wind there was blowing the wrong way and the water being pretty flat calm at the river end of the lake, I wasn't too chuffed. I hadn't really brought anything to fish for silvers, so it was to be an all out carp day.
I set up two wagglers, one shallow and one at depth (although with the lakes being at a low level, the depth rig is only around 3'). A lead rod and four topkits, one with a paste rig on 0.19, one with a MW mini diamond on 0.17 for down the margin, a MW diamond on 0.18 with a 0.16 hooklength for soft pellet, meat or worm and a MW slim power on 0.17 straight through to a 16B960 and a hair rigged band.
Charlie Barnes was impatient on 85 and shouted the all-in a minute before the official hooter, I started on the lead towards the point of the spit and after 10 minutes without an indication, my brain had turned to mush, so up the bank it went. I had fed a line at 14m straight in front and a waggler line about 35m out pointing to peg 88.
It took an hour to get my first fish on the waggler, I did have one more chuck of the lead and had a fish on that, but that was the last use of it. I had one at 14m on paste and then a couple more on the waggler. It was difficult to get more than one bite from any line, I then had a run of bites on the waggler and put 3 more fish in the net before it dried up. I tried the pole line again, and had two skimmers, one on double worm and one on banded 8mm pellet, no sign of a carp.
The last hour and a half saw me persevere with the waggler rods, although I only took one fish on the shallow waggler, even though the fish were up in the water.I added several more, I dropped down to a 18 hook and seemed to get a few more bites, one of which was a unseen, but big fish, that I played for nearly 20 minutes before the hook straightend. I ended the match with 10 carp and 2 skimmers for 88.13, I think that was top weight on my bank, but nowhere near enough for a pick up.
I think the match should have been won from 118, but the guy on there had two nets in and both were over the 70lb limit, one was ounces from being over the 90lb disqualification weight. You'll have to look at Tony's blog for the results (he suffered being on the same bank as me and had a high 70lb) as I got away sharpish, I'm up early in the morning and off to the Oval, to see the first day of the fourth test - although the weather forecast points to a day in the bar......
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