Thursday, 26 July 2012

Wednesday 25/07/2012 - Avon Angling Open - Lands End - Match and Specimen Lakes

After putting in a lot of effort in to yesterdays match in the blazing sun I was a little slow getting focussed on today’s match at Landsend. After a cool shower and breakfast in Shipman with two of my Coffin Dodger mates Ray and Paul it was in to the draw box and with only two tickets left, pegs 34 and 21 I was hoping it would be peg 34 as it does have a good record for the Silvers, but no peg 21 comes out a real Carp Slaying peg. Arriving at the peg I found myself surrounded by them all up in the water. Luckily, Tony Rixon arrived at peg 19 so hopefully Tony would keep them occupied as it was to be an out and out Silvers match for me as being realistic I cannot compete mentally or physically with the up in the water Carp Slayers and that is what you would need to do for any overall coin today (roll on winter).

Peg 21 does have a great LH margin accessible with a top set plus a bit of the number four. It also has a reasonable flat bottom with not too many snags to contend with. So two rigs, a margin Silvers rig for caster and worm (not a Ronnie rig) and a paste rig as the margins do offer some of the larger Skimmers to this bait.

I started by potting in some caster by now Tony was playing his first Carp! I think I was second to catch a fish, a 2oz Perch on double caster. It wasn’t long before I abandoned this as the tiny Perch would mash one of the casters on the drop and mash the other on the bottom, if I did hook one they often fell off. So on to the worm over the caster and similarly the small Perch were tugging off the worm. I did have a couple of 8oz specimens before I put the paste out. This lead to four decent Skimmers to 2lb losing two foul hooked ones at the net – this was a bugger because as at it happened these would have got me coin by default.

Time for experiments me thinks. So I got out a deep paste rig and another pole section to fish at five metre just down the inside ledge. It’s amazing how I could get fish fizzing over just the paste hook bait with no feed. I think they are feeding over the particles that fall away from the paste just above bottom as it took a while to get any indication. I did have one more Skimmer and a couple of Ghost Carp. Back in to the margins and in the last hour the Carp had arrived landing six more. My eight Carp weighed 47lb 8oz and my Silvers 11lb 8oz of a total of 59lb - no coin today.

The match was won my Tony Rixon (pictured above centre complete with his stalking/mugging attire – I thought he looked more like an Ice cream Man) with a new venue match record of 351lb 10oz from peg 19. See Tony’s blog on how he captured this many fish. Still the second best Angler in the South West - not ready for "Filp Flops" yet matey - well done - pleasure to witness.

I have had the pleasure of fishing next to both these venue match record holders and to be truthful there isn’t much difference between their rigs and methods. Tony will tell you he’s “Stalking” and Anton will tell you he’s a “Slapper”. Neither of them fed any bait (that’s the only part I like about this method). The difference between them for me is that Anton has the youth and the endurance strength. However, Tony has the smoothness and experience – done it all before. I must say I didn’t have a ripple from Tony’s peg when landing his fish, and I bet he used the same rig all day.

The Silvers was won accidentally by An-Ton Page (pictured right) with 28lb from peg 34. Anton caught Chub and F1’s shallow with 8mm banded hard pellet – slapping it around – sickening isn’t it.

Full Result:

1.      Tony Rixon 351-10-0 peg 19 (New venue match record)
2.      An-Ton Page 227-13-0 peg 34 (Ex record holder)
3.      Dean Malin 161-03-0 peg 5
4.      Tom Thick 158-0-0 peg 24
5.      Martin Lenaghan 129-05-0 peg 11
6.      Dave Roper 100-13-0 peg 15

Top Silvers:

1.      An-Ton Page 28-0-0 peg 34
2.      Martin Lenaghan 19-0-0 peg 11
3.      Joe McMahon 15-04-0 peg 36 

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