Silverfox Match Angling: Sunday 08/11/2015 - Tony Rixon Open - Harescombe Fishery

Sunday 8 November 2015

Sunday 08/11/2015 - Tony Rixon Open - Harescombe Fishery - Fields Lake

I was back travelling with Bela even though I was risking catching his Man Flu. First stop, the Beefeater for a scrummy breakfast.

Both of us were looking forward to fishing a new venue the Fields Lake at Harescombe with the promise of lots of big Carp but most importantly for me big Ronnie’s, which was to be my focus for the day.

I think we were all hoping to draw the near end where the Lake was the widest. In to the draw bag and out comes peg 4 which put me half way along the left hand bank, reasonably happy with this. However, because there wasn’t much structure to the parking I had to walk from the van.

For company I had Kev Moulton to my right and Alan Oram to my left – good company then.

The pegs I really fancied were pegs 10 and 11. These were taken by Bela and Tony Rixon (pictured above).

My bait tray was made up as shown right.

I set up three rigs – a 4x16 Jolly to fish at top-set plus one at 12- o clock where I would be fishing in five foot of water some 2 foot up the inside shelf. The Ronnie rig and a margin paste rig for the down wind margin in 3 foot of water.

I started by feeding a pot of micro with 10 pieces of 6mm meat out on the Jolly line and started to loose feed caster on the Ronnie line. First put in on the Ronnie rig with single caster I hooked and landed a 4lb Common Carp. The writing was on the wall I should have forgotten the Ronnie’s and changed to Carp fishing. I didn’t because I was still expecting to catch some big Ronnie’s. I did catch a few but it was really slow and they were only 3oz fish. The wind wasn’t right for this rig dragging it through too fast. I changed to the Jolly with 6mm meat but that produced nothing. I decided to change this line to caster with a dash of worm. I tried a piece of worm but didn’t have a bite switching to double caster was producing bites on the drop which I couldn’t hit. So I set up the 4 metres Drennan whip with a small waggler, set to full depth but fished on the drop with just 5x12 shot droppers. This initially worked better but if I loose fed I would hook a Carp. So I had to sneak the caster feed in by pot, it wasn’t idea but kept the odd Ronnie coming. I did hook 10 Carp on the flick tipped whip loosing 7 hooks and landing 3 Carp on 0.1 G-line! I had been feeding hard 4’s down the RH margin so rested the Ronnie’s and tried the paste and had two Carp. The wind dropped in the last hour so I went back on the Ronnie rig and had a good 15 minutes catching Ronnie’s to 6oz. However, they were soon being disrupted by Carp landing another two before the all out.

I finished with a disappointing 11lb 8oz of Silvers putting me second in the Silvers and my Carp weighed a surprising 41lb 8oz fro a match third with 53lb.

The Match was won by Tony Rixon (pictured right with some of his catch) with 114lb from peg 9. See his blog on how he thrashed around shallow long on the pole.

The Silvers was won by Stewart Graham (pictured right a bit hazy with the match winner – unfortunately he couldn’t keep still!) with 12lb 2oz from peg 8. Stewart caught short using worm and caster.

Today was a bit of a trial match and I think we all concurred that although it’s a great pleasure fishing Lake it isn’t a Match Lake. That said the day was very enjoyable, especially as both Bela and me picked up some coin – double bubble again.

Bela decided to take a "Long Cut" Home around Yate - Duh!

Full Result: