Sunday 10/04/2011 - Avon Angling Open - The Sedges Fishery - Tile lake

Bela and I had planned to travel to the Sedges with Paul Elmes. Unfortunately Bela cried off because he has landed himself a nasty virus - get well soon matey. After a few failed attempts to get Tim Ford (sorry I got you up early mate) a lift with us, it was Paul and I having a great breakfast in the Fountain Café in St George alone. I was amazed how much Paul can eat. Paul drives a VW 2.5 TDI Transporter, I soon formed the opinion that it is probably the best vehicle for match anglers, it can take three lots of gear with ease.

It was nice up meet up with Denise and Jamie again. Once more they have improved the fishery since my last visit, not only with fish stocking but also the surrounding environment. It is certainly a popular venue with very few pegs not being fished. You reap what you so in this life.

We were on Tile Lake today with the wind blowing towards the car park end, a draw this end half would be crucial. Travelling partner Paul drew the right end with corner peg 21. I pulled peg 29 one from the far end. I have drawn this peg a couple of times before and haven’t really done any good for Skimmers, but have picked up in the Silvers pool on each occasion with Rudd and Ronnie’s. Even so I set up a Skimmers rig to be fished at 10 metres with 3mm expander pellet over Skimmer GB (just in case there were some of the newly stocked big Bream in the peg). For my main target I set up my two usual Ronnie rigs – one for shallow and the other at depth at 5 metres. Because of the bright conditions and clearish water I decided to only feed one ball of GB laced with wetted micros for the Skimmers (and Bream!). I started after the Ronnie’s with caster and basically got Ruddied out with 1-2oz Rudd. I tried the 4x16 Jolly for the Skimmers but once again got tiddlered out with 2 – 3oz blades. In fact the float was stood up by them every cast. I made the decision to forget this line as I thought I was catching marginally more weight with the Rudd simply because I was catching more of them (averaging 2 per minute). In the last hour I did start getting a few bigger Ronnie’s – up to 4oz! My Silvers weighed in at 31lb 12oz for second in the Silvers and 8th overall (I think).

The match was won by Tim Ford (pictured upper right with part of his catch) on corner peg 40 with 119lb 9oz. Tim caught ….see his blog.

The Silvers was won by Steve Hutchinson (pictured right with the match winner) from peg 35 with 48lb 5oz which consisted of primarily seven Bream to 7lb (complete opposite of the spectrum to my catch). Steve caught at 13 metres using chopped worm over potted CW&C. Steve fed about ½ kilo of worm with a pint of caster.

Steve Segar next to me on end peg 30 caught one of these recently stocked big Bream on his last cast (pictured lower right with a skinny 6 pounder).

Overall the lake fished well under the conditions. I think most of the anglers will be back soon.

Full Result:

1. Tim Ford 119-09-0 peg 40
2. Tom Mangnel 99-10-0 peg 39
3. Tony Rixon 93-06-0 peg 23
4. Steve Hutchinson 48-05-0 peg 35
5. Paul Elmes 47-122-0 peg 21
6. Tim Clark 42-05-0 peg 34

Top Silvers:

1. Steve Hutchinson 48-05-0 peg 35
2. Mike Nicholls 31-12-0 peg 29
3. Dean Mallin 23-01-0 peg 22