Thursday, 7 November 2013

Avon Angling Open, Plantation Main Lake, Wednesday 6th November 2013



The weather forecasters were promising rain and even gales in coastal areas for today, so I decided to leave the waggler rods at home, just bringing the pole and a lead rod.  To go with the lead rod I had a rummage around at the back of the garage and found a couple of method feeders and decided to take them.

A reasonable breakfast in the cafĂ© at Plantation was had, then into the landing net which was serving as todays swim card receptacle, where there were 17 eager hands trying to pick out one of the known flyers.  Once a again I failed to draw one of the ‘form’ pegs, but I had resolved to go and fish whatever I drew positively today, so off to 26, an island chuck, but I felt just too far up the lake.  There was some confusion over Tim Clark’s draw and Tony directed him to peg 25, which is about 3 yards from 26 and with 27 and 28 in, I did feel a little hemmed in.  It turns out that Tim read his swim card incorrectly and should have been on peg 8, so he moved round there before the start, luckily for him, peg 8 is a much better peg.  Let’s just hope his use of figures is a bit more accurate when applying Ohms law!!

Back to the fishing and it would appear that leaving the waggler rods in the garage was a big mistake, an island chuck, with the gentle breeze off my back - perfect waggler conditions, oh well, no choice but to stick to the plan.  I set up the lead rod and put a method feeder on, with a 3” hooklength (quite why I did this, I’m not sure, as I have never caught a fish on a method feeder and have no confidence in it), some micros with a bit of groundbait were prepared to go on it, along with assorted hookbaits, such as band um’s, pellets and maggots.  Little more to say about the method feeder set up, I started on it and had another go with an hour and a half to go, I am still waiting to catch my first fish on a method feeder………

3 pole rigs were assembled, a MW diamond to fish banded pellet at 14m, a Carpa Chimp to fish soft pellet over the 14m line and as it was the same depth, caster at 8m and a pencil float to fish short with caster or maggot.  On the all-in I cupped a few 4mm pellets and micro’s in a 14m, then 3 balls of groundbait with caster in at 8m and loose fed caster short.  I started on the aforementioned method feeder and gave it half an hour, before chronic boredom set in. 

I had a look over the 14m line with a 6mm hard pellet, but that was as devoid of action as the method feeder, so I topped it back up and dropped a maggot in on the 8m line. I had a skimmer straight away, which was encouraging, but then a couple of small roach before the line died, another top up brought the roach back and one more skimmer.  I had another look over the 14m line, this time with soft pellet and had a small carp and a skimmer on this line, then the wind got up, making presentation tricky and float visibility was very poor.

Switching to the short line brought a decent skimmer and a near double figure carp to the single maggot, but the roach were playing hard to get. For the rest of the match I switched between all 3 pole lines, the 14m line remained dead, the short line produced another big skimmer and a 12lb carp, along with the odd roach, the 8m line did produce odd roach, but was slow going, I think I probably overfed it.

The scales gave me 40.0, 29.04 carp and 10.13 silvers which was 6th overall and in all honesty, I wasn’t too disappointed with that from the peg. Maybe if I’d have targeted the silvers more specifically I’d have lifted myself into a payout position as the top two silvers were paid.

1)   Nick Collier 92.10 peg 31 
2)   Anton Page 85.02 peg 3
3)   Tony Rixon 81.09 peg 4
4)   Rod Wotton 71.07 peg 7 
5)   Tim Clark 67.09 peg 8 
6)   Chris Fox 40.01 peg 26



Silvers:
1) Steve Kedge 17.08 peg 27
2) Tony Rixon 13.00 peg 4
3) Mike Nicholls 12.07 peg 19

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