Wednesday 11/07/2012 - Avon Angling Open - Landsend - Match Lake

Today was a Coffin Dodgers day out, with Ray Bazeley, Paul Haines and me (last of the Summer Wine seems more appropriate). After a meat free breakfast it was off to Landsend. With 15 fishing we were all on Match Lake which had fish extremely well on Sunday. However, I knew it wouldn’t fish that well again today.

Amazingly we had sunshine for most of the day, “Dodging” the rain all day. Amazing really because just down the road at Shepton Mallet they had floods!

In to the draw bag and out comes peg 1 happy with this as it has plenty of margins to fish. The problem was which one?

I think the platform on peg 1 is designed for the disabled and is well up off the water, with a high board across the front which necessitated raising the legs on my box. Unfortunately, I can’t tighten the legs up as I use to. So when I sat on the box both back legs collapsed and I fell off the box backwards hurting my hands and elbow. Luckily there were no top sets about at the time!

Starting on the 4x14 jolly at 9 metres with soft pellet over kindered micro resulted in a stampede of Carp on the surface, foul hooking and losing two. This was followed by a run of small Ronnie’s and nothing else. So I re-fed and it was an exact repeat of the first feed. That was it up the bank with this plan. In to the end margin with CW&C with worm on the hook, this produced a run of small Perch, with many coming off. I soon had enough of this so I fed CW&C out on the 9 metre line and it was a repeat, with the Carp right up on the surface taking the feed  before it got down a foot – another foul hooker followed and one Rudd. By half time all I had to show for my desperate efforts was 6lb of Silvers. I even tried the Ronnie rig but was soon aware that the Ronnies weren't playing fair - missing loads of bites and putting nothing in the net.

I decided to fish out the match in my banker swim, which was in the RH margin as tight in to the bank as the over grown vegetation would allow with a 0.4 gram Gerry of Nottingham Paste and corn rig for the paste. I had been dripping in hard fours and it wasn’t long before I had a 3lb Carp in the net – my first. This swim has a bloody great tree in it so you fish here at your peril; hence I had tightened the elastic right down to “walk the dog”. I then hooked a double figure Common Carp and because I had tightened the elastic right down I pulled out of it. On the next fish I adjusted the elastic as I played it to get some sort on compromise. This work well for most of the match losing only two to the tree branches only because the Carp had come up in the water on the strike. I felt I had turned a disaster in to a resemblance of a match, enjoying the second half putting 14 Carp in the nets.

My Carp weighed in at 73lb 6oz and adding my Silvers took me to 79lb 6oz for third overall – as I expected the Lake fish slightly below par.

The match and the Silvers were won by Tom Mangnall (pictured right admiring the runner up and match organiser) from peg 8 with 102lb10oz (Tom had gone 7lb over in one net which was deducted). Tom caught all his fish over to the far bank using caster over caster.

Full Result:

1.      Tom Mangnall 102-10-0 peg 8

2.      Tony Rixon 87-0-0 peg 15

3.      Mike Nicholls 79-06-0 peg 1

4.      Adrian Jeffery 70-12-0 peg 13

5.      Tom Thick 70-07-0 peg 21

6.      Nigel Bartlett 56-10-0 peg 24

Top Silvers:

1.      Tom Mangnall 22-10-0 peg 8

2.      Tom Thick 19-07-0 peg 21

3.      Nigel Bartlett 17-14-0 peg 24

I am now thinking ahead to Sundays match at Viaduct on Campbell and Lodge.
The question is should I take a waggler rod for Lodge? Doubt it.