Avon Angling Open, Sedges, Sunday 29th July 2012

This was a practice for Tony's float only league, so the lead rods stayed in the van, normally I'd be happy with that, but with an annoying wind that swapped from L to R, face on, R to L and all points in between, the lead, I'm sure would have offered the best presentation on the day.

This match was on Brick lake with all 20 pegs in. I drew 14 and I had already decided on a groundbait and caster approach for the skimmers and pellet/paste for carp. that decision cost me any chance of picking up, as the skimmers caught were taken on meat, as were many of the carp. I fed a line at 9m with the groundbait, caster and a few dead maggots, a line at 14m with softened 4mm and micros and a waggler line out towards the aerator, which was fed with 8mm (nothing smaller would get anywhere near).

It didn't take long to get a bite on the waggler and the first carp was hooked, it felt a decent fish and initially swam towards me, when it turn and went back to the middle, the line went slack, I thought it was a fouler come off, but the line had snapped 1" below the float. 4lb Daiwa Sensor, I have had no issues with this line breaking, except at Viaduct when there are lots of fish in the peg (it seems that if the lines hits another fish it can break). Maybe its an issue with carrying rods already set up, I hadn't checked it over since the last time it was used, at least setting up fresh every time you see line damage.

That was it for the waggler, 3/4 of an hour and only a lost fish to show for it and one other missed bite. Sa switch to the groundbait and caster line produced one skimmer, lucky if it was 2oz, nothing else seemed to fancy an caster. The 14m pellet line also produced nothing, to either soft or banded pellet. I set up a waggler to fish at depth and laid 12" of line on the bottom, to try and achieve some sort of presentation. This produced some indications that fish were actually in the peg and resulted in three fish for 18lb in 30 minutes, before the wind swung round again and even with 12" of line and 4 No8 stotz dragging the bottom, the float was being pushed back towards me, far too fast to fool a fish.

I had refed the groundbait line with some pellet and a look over that with the paste produced a carp nudging double figures, but that was to be my lot, I had less than 8oz of skimmers and the 4 carp went 28lb odd for a resounding no where on the day. The decision not to take meat was a costly one.......

See Mike Nicholl's blog for the results. http://silverfoxangling.blogspot.co.uk/