After a decent breakfast in the Fountain Café it was off to Avalon Fishery for their sell out forty peg Christmas Match. With a hard frost and fairly bright conditions the fishing was always going to be hard. I am not sure everyone was going to appreciated this.
I must say both Vic Bush and his wife Heather did us proud with great traditional prizes (pictured right) and post match cups of soup and home made mince pies – no wonder Vic always looks so well!!
I haven’t fished this venue yet this year and was looking forward to fishing it again as it is a well maintained venue, and always seems to keep it’s colour.
In to the draw tin and out comes peg 43 I wasn’t sure where I was and how good the peg would be. Arriving at the peg I found myself next to my travelling partner Bela on peg 44 and Dave Roper on peg 42. The peg looked as if it might have some Carp form as it had a tiny crooked bay opposite with some cover. I decided on two rigs a 4x16 jolly to be fished at 13 metres and a very small Drennan feeder for down the shelf of the far bank. I decide to have a wetted micro swim at 13 metres at 1-o clock in the shadow of three tree trunks and a GB line also at 13 metres at 10-o clock against a very think shadow of another tree trunk – the light (which was ever changing) was extremely bad because of the trees on the opposite island having shed their leaves. I had decided that I would fish both lines on the pole, and then determine which might be the best hook bait and feeder contents for the feeder. On the all in I feed a kinder pot of GB laced with ten dead reds, followed up with 20ish micro on the other line. Starting on triple maggot over the GB I finally had a 3oz Skimmer after 15 minutes, followed by five more before I re-fed and tried the micro line, again with dead reds. This resulted in a small Ronnie and a couple of small Skimmers. I switched to the 4mm expander pellet and had a couple more small Skimmers. Because the size of fish didn’t improve I switched back to the dead reds hook bait, because they are more robust during a long wait for a bite. By switching between the lines I kept a few very small Skimmers coming, but it was very slow all round me. I finally decided to try the feeder with GB laced with micro with dead reds on the hook. The bites on the pole were to say the least very shy, as it proved on the feeder catching another two small Skimmers. I did have one good bite which I initially thought was a better Skimmer and half way back the fish lunged which felt like a Pike had taken it. However, it proved to be a Carp (to Bela’s amusement), my one and only weighing 1lb 1oz! I soon got bored and came back in on the pole and had a run of Skimmers again over the GB, bringing my total number of Skimmers to 16 which unfortunately only weighed in at 6lb 5oz which was only good enough for third in the Silvers. My total weight of 7lb 6oz got me my coveted box of biscuits.
The match was won by Vince Brown (pictured right with the Silvers winner) from peg 19 with 48lb 4oz. Vince caught on the feeder compacted with micro pellet attached to a short 0.1mm hook length with hair rigged double 4mm expander pellet. Vince had two quality double figure Carp in his catch.
The Silvers was won by Tony Rixon with 9lb from peg 28. Tony caught on….see his blog.
I was surprised that Vic allows vagrants to fish his matches. I caught this one on camera after the match (pictured right).
Full Result:
1. Vince Brown 48-04-0 peg 19
2. Andy Gurd 15-08-0 peg 27
3. Darren North 1401-0 peg 10
4. Shane Caswell 13-04-0 peg 24
5. Chris Fox 11-11-0 peg 48
6. John Bradford 11-08-0 peg 9
Top Silvers:
1. Tony Rixon 9-0-0 peg 28
2. Alan Oram 7-14-0 peg 12
3. Mike Nicholls 6-04-0 peg 43
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