Sunday 24/07/2011 - Kings Head Open - Rood Ashton

Bela and I had originally booked in to the Avon Angling Open at Shiplate Fishery - Bream Lake. However, we changed our minds and instead booked in with Layton Palmer at Rood. Tony was usual his usual affable self on receiving the news – he had a waiting list.
After a great breakfast at Timmy’s (wetherspoons) place in Kingswood it was off to Rood Ashton, which for me is a trip down memory lane, passing through Bathford, Staverton and the Kings Arms (Wadden).

It was good to meet up with Alan Pike (pictured right) the Fishery owner’s son again. He explained that he is having problems with fish theft; hence we all had to walk from the car park and good precaution I think.

You really have to be careful when pegging this venue as it’s easy to get it wrong. I managed for once not to stick my nose in and was surprised to find that the pegging was spot on – well done Leyton - sorry Martin R and Ray B pegged it under the strict supervision of Leyton.

In to the draw pot and out comes peg 9 which was on the top bank and a peg I have fished before. I was told it was the shortest island chuck, which left me wondering what I was going to chuck at it – my pole or seat box perhaps! I was hoping that Alan had excavated the peg out to the depth I had last Wednesday, alas not I had a full 18 inches, at least I couldn’t drown! The wind was off my back which was a negative as it was blowing down to pegs 1 and 2. The positive was that I had plenty of water to pull fish from. With no Silvers pool is was Carp or Carp. So I set up a paste rig and a soft pellet rig to be fished at 6 metres, with the paste rig also OK for the RH margin. Before the off I decided that a bit of gardening was required in the margin removing a lot of the branches of the Alder Tree, plus as many of the submerged Brambles as I could – which wasn’t enough!

From the learning from the Wednesday match I decided to feed dead red maggot in the kinder pot with either 6mm expander or paste rig. Starting on the expander resulted in one missed bite – was it a Ronnie – tempting - not. Out on the paste and I had a run of three Carp before it went quite. I decided because of the depth that every Carp caught scared off another two, so I started to loose feed the dead maggot by hand, moreover, I fed them all over the swim hoping that I could hold some fish in the wings. This worked much better even so it was slow with the strong tow from the wind often pulling the paste off before a fish had a look. It was a case of ship out and quickly pull back the pole to hold it in the tow (it was pulling with the wind as you would expect in shallow water). I kept fish coming on an off whilst drip feeding the margin with hard 4’s. It wasn’t until the last half hour before the fish arrived in the margin which resulted in an 8lb fish and on the whistle I lost one of a similar size plus my rig in the bank side brambles – at least I didn’t have to put the rig back on the winder!! I finished the match with 21 fish. As I couldn’t see anyone from my swim I had no idea how it fished. Martin Rayett walked up and said he had 28 Carp and those on the lawn had not caught that well. So I was hoping for second. My Carp weighed 97lb 2oz which, because they were of a bigger size than Martins it was enough to win overall.

However, Martin (pictured right with the winner) came second overall with a close 85lb 6oz – also caught on the pole. It was satisfying to see the Method Men taking up the lower order with much smaller fish than is captured by the pole.

Full Result:

1. Mike Nicholls 97-02-0 peg 9
2. Martin Rayett 85-06-0 peg 10
3. Jamie Dyte 72-07-0 peg 5
4. Leyton Palmer 52-14-0 peg 7 (section)
5. Ray Bazeley 51-09-0 peg 2 (section)
6. Paul Haines 50-07-0 peg 4