Float Only Open, Avalon, Sunday 21st June 2020

This should have been one of the rounds of Tony's popular float only league, so it was run as a float only open.  When I got there and found there were 46 booked on (48 peg lake), I thought it would be a hard day, that's a lot of pressure for a lake that isn't match fished at that intensity often, but hard or not, someone still has to win.

I'd brought my waggler rods, fancying a day's waggler fishing, the shallow waggler to the island being a successful method on this lake.  That went out of the window when lake owner and Mosella UK boss Vic Bush drew me peg 48, the last peg on the far bank, a corner and a short walk from the car park - but no island....

The consensus was fish down into the corner and hang on, some of the lakes bigger fish reside there, so I duly had a plumb around - Vic told me there would be a shallow ledge, it shallows up nicely into the corner and the bottom turns from soft and slightly silty to gravel - perfect.  I couldn't plumb up properly to start with, so many twigs, brambles and branches had obviously blown in there over the spring and sunk....  A good clear out and I settled on two rigs, one set at 18" and another at 2'6".

I st a rig to fish expanders for skimmers at 14m - a rig to go over that with banded pellet if they got big or the carp showed up and a paste rig to fish paste short.

Well, I am not going to try and spin this out, there is very little to say, I started on paste, wasn't convinced I'd catch when there was absolutely no blows or signs over the feed.  Had a look down into the corner - where I'd been strict with myself and had potted just a few pellets in.  Nothing to show for that.  The skimmer line next, I'd fed a nugget of GB with micros in, really negative, nothing....

It took two hours to get a bite, a 4lber on 8mm pellet on the 2'6" rig against the far bank. Ten minutes later, a 9lber graced the net, I thought the corner was going to produce, but no, that was it, another hour without so much as a liner.

Back on the skimmer rig, I did have one bite on it, a small skimmer and that was it, no more.  At 15:15 I had a 7lber on the deeper edge rig, again on pellet and that was it, 3 carp and a skimmer for 20lb in 6 hours, I won't deny at times I was bored, as nothing I tried worked.  Two bouts of rain as well, so all in all it could have been a better day.  I even put a big pot of GB in the edge and tried worms over it, I had one little unidentified fish on it that fell off.

Bit of a shit run really, but upwards and onwards, next weekend could be better - Sunday at Todber, a short pole match, so not much to focus on.

Just to round off the expensive weekend, after the pole section ended up in Barston yesterday, got home and found the boiler leaking into my float making material.... the float making materials survived, but the boiler cost a few quid to repair.....