Sunday 27 September 2009

Sunday 27/09/2009 - Chalie Barnes Open - Bullocks Farm

Driving back I decided to have a look at the traffic on the M5 motorway – as expected the traffic was backed up to Clevedon - Junction 20. It has been like this for weeks, there must be a huge hole in the ozone layer just about above the Avon Bridge. I wonder what this is costing in terms of driver’s time and petrol. Why not wait until February to do these sorts of repairs? Anyway I had a good steady drive home using the A38!!

Charlie as you might expect planned for 21 anglers but ended up with 24! This necessitated using four pegs on the North Pool. Having walked round I fancied pegs 12 (if 13 wasn’t in), 15, 17, 18, 21, 22, 25 and 26 on the match lake. I drew peg 17 and was well pleased with this. Phil came round and said that 40lb of Skimmers had come off the peg in the week. Umm, lovely jubbly!! Because of this I decided to put in some GB 50/50 Gros Gardons/Gimps Gold. I set up my usual paste margin rig and a maggot margin rig. I started on a 4x12 Jolly at 7 metres with single red maggot and quickly landed a Fantail Crucian. I then had a 1lb Carp – then it went tits up, foul hooking the next four fish. Looking round everyone was struggling to catch Silvers – and anything else. With Nicky Collins struggling on peg 21 and Charlie peg 18 for Silvers. On the half hour mark I made a difficult decision – to go out and out for Carp in the margin – far too early really. The next half hour I spent getting the margin sorted as there are lots of tree roots in the margin. I then had a couple of decent Carp on the paste over 4mm pellet. However, I was still foul hooking a few. I changed to feeding micro pellet and after a few more Carp, still foul hooking a few. I now had a choice - feed caster or maggot. Triggers Barber told me he had caught on maggot in his last match in the peg. So maggot it was. This changed things altogether, with Carp moving straight on to the paste (I did try fishing maggot but because the hook was exposed it was prone to catch the tree roots and foul hooking). I had a good run to the end of the match landing 14 Carp for a total of 58lb 8oz. This put me top on the match lake. However, Gary Bedford weighed 75lb 10oz on North Pool. This put me second overall and a pick up of £85.

It wasn’t a day to win both the Silvers and Carp – so a choice had to be made.

Gary Bedford (pictured right) won the match from peg 12 on North Pool fishing 6 and 8mm pellet at the four extremities of his peg – margin to margin. Gary fed very little – in his words “a handful”.

The Silvers result was interesting with Father and Son taking joint top from pegs 26 and 24 with 12lb 5oz each.

Full Result:

1. Gary Bedford 75-10-0 peg North Pool 12
2. Mike Nicholls 58-08-0 peg 17
3. Adrian Jefferies 50-04-0 peg 19
4. Tom Thick 49-07-0 peg 25
5. Jason Radford 40-06-0 peg 22
6. Paul Fairies 36-02-0 peg North Pool 6

Top Silvers:

1. Glyn Wickems 12-05-0 peg 26
2. Ray Wickems 12-05-0 peg 24
3. Nicky Collins 12-04-0 peg 21


Jason Radford dropped his Diawa Pro Half-Ex in the lake on peg 22 and after the match he stripped off and went in for it. The video bottom shows him feeling around with his toes with help from Colin Dyer. What on earth is happening to the front on the platform? The lake is not as silted and I thought! The picture right shows Jason with his retrieved section. Well done Matey.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

split venues are ok when the 2 lakes are full. if you give someone like gary who knows the venue that well he is always going to be hard to beat given that much room on a good peg