Sunday 08/05/2011 - Avon Angling Float Only League - Round One - Viaduct Fishery

I remember now why I haven’t fished a complete Float Only series before, I get home too late. By the time I get the result, drive home, have a Pinky Ponk Juice in my garage with Bela for the post match post-mortem, put the tackle away and have my dinner it’s 21:00. Then there is authoritive question from the Special One “Why are you so late”?

I have a new Cardinal Rule: Never take the Michael out of a DNW’er as you may draw his peg next time out!!

As destiny would have it in to the draw bag and out comes peg 130. The same peg that Nick Collier DNW’ed on last Thursday’s match. However, I was reasonably happy just to be on Campbell Lake, but have this little nagging doubt as Nick is a good angler. I set up two identical 4x14 rigs one with 0.14 line the other 0.16 to help fish faster if bagging (I don’t think you do get them out much quicker though as you adjust the force to be less tahn the hook pull out factor), both to be fished over the same line at 7 metres with meat. Two paste rigs one to be fished out as far as the really nasty gusting wind would allow, which was 9 metres! The other paste rig was for plundering the LH margin. Umm.

Starting on the 8mm meat over kinder potted 6’s. I had a Carp as soon as it reached 1 inch off bottom. I then had 3 more in quick succession, then four Tench – happy days. If the final whistle had gone now after half hour I would have won the match putting a smile off the Special One’s face fro being home early. I then foul hooked two Tench consecutively (I could tell they were Tench because of their thick slime on the line), quickly followed by a lost flying Bream which seemed to by waving goodbye because from that point on I really struggled, picking the odd Tench and Carp off on the paste from the margin and 9 metres. Most of the anglers on my bank struggled (relatively speaking). There appeared to be total lack of undertow, which I think is important for the fish to feed properly. With 15 minutes to go I reckon I needed a couple more decent Carp for a section win and willed the paste float to go down and landed a 4 lb Carp. Out again and with 30 seconds to go the paste float went down again and a definite lump on. Great – not, it snagged my elastic in a very strange way. The Carp broke the line and my elastic was deeply chafed, so a sad good by to another Middy Blue which I have had for two years!

My Silvers weighed 17lb 4oz and the Carp 52lb 9oz fro a total of 69lb 13oz. This put me second in the section by 7lb which was won by good mate John Baker on peg 128. This left me 14th in the match and 11th in the Silvers.

The match was won by Tony Rixon (pictured right with some of his catch) from peg 112 …see his blog for details. But I bet he misses the part where after losing a pole rig Tony decides to recover it with his waggler, instead immediately hooked a Carp (there might have been a few fish in his swim then) . He also retrieved his rig, the float is no doubt back on the shelf at the shop for sale at £1.99.

The Silvers was won by Tom Thick (pictured lower right with the overall winner) from peg 94 with 33lb 3oz of Skimmers. Tom caught on 6mm expander pellet fished over the same fed through a kinder pot, some thing he’s copied form the legend Colin Golding.

Full Result:

1. Tony Rixon 192-10-0 (209-10-0 defaulted) peg 112
2. Clayton Hudson 121-07-0 peg 116
3. Kevin Moulton 118-04-0 peg 111
4. Matt Tomes 117-02-0 peg 121
5. Bob Gullick 110-15-0 peg 113
6. Ron Hardiman 97-04-0 peg 118
7. Craig Edmonds 97-03-0 peg 87

Top Silvers:

1. Tom Thick 33-13-0 peg 94
2. Craig Edmonds 30-13-0 peg 87
3. Chris Davis 30-14-0 peg 123