Friday, 29 May 2015

Costcutter Open, Avalon, Thursday 28th May 2015



As much as I enjoy fishing Viaduct, it’s nice to have some variety, so I booked into this week’s costcutter at Avalon.  I was quite intent on just taking 6 & 8mm pellets and a bag of paste, but a conversation with owner Vic Bush saw me putting so GB and a kilo of worms (that have been in the fridge since March, surely they won’t last much longer) into the bait bag.

Travelling down with Tony Rixon,  we had the usual Shipham brekkie and then drew next to each other, me on peg 5 and Tony on 3.  He badgered me into a £1 side bet, which I don’t usually indulge in, it was because he knew I had the worms and would be tempted to use them……….
A short walk and plenty of time, so I set up a pellet waggler, a depth waggler and a lead rod.  Three topkits as well, a rig to fish banded pellet, one for paste and one for down the edge.  Bait tray just had 6 & 8mm pellets initially and I started on the pellet waggler.  This was producing bites and fish, not big fish, several carp to 3lb and a couple of hybrids which were just over 1lb.  The fish were tight to the rushes and backing off into the gap under a tree, after the first hour which saw 20lb in the net, the wind made the waggler fishing fairly pointless, it kept switching directiom fron R-L and then back to L-R.  It wasn’t even a consistent breeze up the lake, just a wind lane which was less than 2m wide and this was catching the line and pulling the float along within seconds of it landing.

I did try the lead, but 10 minutes of watching a motionless tip was enough, so I had a look over the feed I’d put in on the pole line, nothing,  not that I was surprised, as I hadn’t seen any blowing or other signs of fish.  Time to mix the GB and try the worms, this was fairly uneventful, then Vic turned up and encouraged me to up the feed, this brought a 6oz rudd to the worm bait, this remained the only fish caught on this bait.

Dropping paste over the worm/GB feed, saw a carp netted, a carp lost then three skimmers of a decent size landed, before the line quietened down again. I refed and had another look on the waggler, this brought another odd fish or two, but the wind remained a constant frustration to presenting a bait that wasn’t trotting along and away from the rushes.

Back on the paste and another fish netted, but it was slow going and at the all-out, I knew my messing about with worms had cost me £1 to Mr Rixon.  Vic jumped on my box and had a go with the paste, landing a 13lb fish shortly afterwards…….  How do they know the match has finished??
So, with hindsight, 6 hours thrashing the reeds with a waggler would probably have been the best thing to do, also a lesson learnt about feeding at Avalon – they want some, no place for gentle drip feeding here!!  Frustrating but enjoyable day, hopefully I can get back here before too long, my fish went 64.15 and that 13lb carp that Vic had after the whistle on my gear would have seen my £1 safe if it had found the paste 10 minutes earlier……..

1: Glenn Bailey 108lb peg 16
2: Mike West 99.13 peg 1
3: Tony Rixon 72.07 peg 3
4: Paul Lock 67.02
5: Chris Fox 64.15 peg 5

Silvers
1: Mike Nicholls 37.10 peg 23
2: Paul Lock 35.01

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