Silverfox Match Angling: Sunday 11/07/2016 - Tony Rixon's Short Pole League - Round Two - Chiltern Trinity

Monday, 11 July 2016

Sunday 11/07/2016 - Tony Rixon's Short Pole League - Round Two - Chiltern Trinity - Woodlands

It was the usual breakfast stop at the Hilltops café for Trev and me, quite a few there with matches on the Huntspill and Sedges.

Arriving at the fishery I had a walk around and noticed that a lot of maintenance work has been done to the Lake. Peg 15 and 6 had been cleared with a digger, most swims having a hair cut – good job.

I had a chat with Emma Drysdale who yesterday had fished the Ladies Fish o Mania. I was amazed to find out that they didn’t draw for pegs but were placed with the end pegs being favoured. Emma was in the middle. What’s all that about doesn’t seem fair to me.

Tony announced the pairing for the knockout and I had been drawn with Somerset’s best Mike West.

In to the draw box and out comes peg 6. Happy with this as I have won from it the two times I have fished it, from under the tree on the RH side, which was no longer there. The digger had been to work as the pictures right show. Now my biggest mistake of the day was to think that the digger would have

pretty well have cleared out roots and snags. The platform is enormous (pictured right) and with it being a short pole match had to decide which side to fish, obviously the right side was chosen. I plumbed around and couldn’t really find any significant snags. For company I had Blogger Chris Fox on peg 7 and Two Pots round the corner on peg 3.

Three rigs – Ronnie rig which didn’t get a serious outing. A 0.3 gram Barnett paste float for the margin in 3 foot of water at top-set plus 2 ½ sections and a PC 0.4 gram set to 7 foot again for paste at top-set plus one.

I fed the margin with hard 4’s and the deep peg with a large pot of wetted micro, it was soon fizzing like crazy, so this is where I started. First put in I had a bite and struck and didn’t connect with it until half depth. Sure to be foul hooked then, amazingly it wasn’t and after a battle trying to keep it from getting under he platform I netted a beautiful scale perfect double Common Carp. Next put in the same happened and another perfect Common in the net. Fizz had declined so re-fed and the fizz returned. Hooked another Common Carp soon after but this time in the normal way, I had to tap dance around the huge platform a couple of times trying to retrieving it from under the platform twice! Alas the hook pulled due to all this pressure. I re-fed but the fizz had seriously reduced missing one further bite. In to the margin where I had kept up the feeding of hard 4’s, I was soon playing my first margin munter which snagged me but managed to persuade it out and after another tap dance around the platform I lost it around one of the legs – bugger. Things got worse and the next one went into a snag loosing the complete rig. I plumbed around again choosing another margin swim. I did this two more times before I actually found a safe heaven for my rig. However, it cost me, losing eight Carp either in a snag or under the bloody platform. The safe haven produced another four Carp and one Tench before the all out.

My Carp weighed 44lb 10 oz and my lonely Tench 3lb 1oz for a total of 47lb 11oz. What was so frustrating for me because I had enough fish on the hook to make the frame and pick up some coin. Whilst waiting for the scales I decided to get my hooked cutter out and clear the swim which I managed to do. If only I did this before hand!!

Two solaces I got through the knockout and I gave Bela and Two Pots a right laugh with my Silverfox platform dance. Had some stick on the way home from Trev.

A full elastic check in the morning suspect some serious dmage.

The match was won by Tom Mangnall (pictured right) with 101lb 80z from peg 17. Tom initially caught shallow at full length with meat hook bait then later plundered his RH margin up to empty platform 16 fish 8mm pellet over 8mm feed.