Avon Angling Open, Wildmarsh, 22/04/12

I like fishing Wildmarsh, it usually fishes a lot harder in matches, than pleasure fishing and it doesn't take huge weights to frame. I was grateful for the 10.00 draw, as I had been into town the night before on my leaving 'do'. (Large quantities of Jaegerbombs and then fishing really don't mix.......)

Still once I'd got to peg 29 and set up a small groundbait feeder, a waggler and two pole rigs, I was feeling much better, the two rigs were a 0.5g MW diamond to fish at 12m and a Carpa Chimp 4x14 to fish close in. On the whistle I fed caster short, micros, caster and dead maggot at 12m, then had 1/2 an hour on the g/bait feeder, which produced on tiny roach. That went up the bank and I had a look over the 12m line and almost straight away hooked and lost a good fish, straight after I had a decent skimmer. Then another, but bites were hard to come by, a look on the close rig produced a few roach, but not at anywhere near the rate needed to make it a viable option.

Back to 12m and a tench was gratefully netted, by now the rain in the face had stopped, but the wind had increased making presentation at 12m impossible. A switch to the waggler brought a bream to the net, but even with 12" of line on the bottom and 3 No8 shot, the wind was pushing it through as if it was rigged with sails.

I started a new line at 7m to my left, hoping that the presentation would be better, that produced nothing, the feeder was resorted to again, but I had nothing on it. I did wonder if g/bait was the problem, as I didn't catch over it at all, only where I fed micros and caster. I tried a new feeder line with micros and dead reds, all to no avail. So the odd roach and motherless minnow were all I could manage for the last hour or so, the match ruined for me and the others on the spit (with the exception of the method slingers...) by the wind.

My 11lb odd was just out of the silvers money, one more decent skimmer would have done it, still you can change the way you fish, but you can't change the weather - unless of course you are a water company and announce a drought, hasn't it rained most days since they told us the South West was in drought??

1.      Adrian Jefferies 32-14-0 peg 25

2.      Dean Malin 27-08-0 peg 42

3.      Tony Rixon 26-09-0 peg 30

4.      Steve Kedge 26-02-0 peg 9

5.      Steve Tucker 24-07-0 peg 58

6.      Glen Calvert 23-01-0 peg 6

  Silvers:

1.      Steve Tucker 16-10-0 peg 58

2.      Paul Faiers 16-05-0 peg 20

3.      Tony Rixon 15-0-0 peg 30