Silverfox Match Angling: Sunday 19/03/2017 - Tony Rixon Open - Avalon Fishery

Sunday, 19 March 2017

Sunday 19/03/2017 - Tony Rixon Open - Avalon Fishery - Match Lake

Very sad to hear my all time R&R hero has passed away. It has been said if it wasn’t called Rock and Roll it would have been named Chuck Berry. I was lucky to have seen Chuck perform live in the mid 60’s at the Chinese Jazz Club. I was stood at the front of the stage no more than three feet away – absolutely amazing, especially watching him plat his guitar behind his back. Chuck you may have passed on but your music will last for ever – RIP.

Geoff Francis and I decided to try one of Tony Rixon’s opens at the Avalon Fishery. A great all round fishery, for me the Silvers fishing is special. Our first stop was for breakfast at Shipham. We arrived at the fishery in plenty of time to give Geoff a guided tour around the Lakes. Unfortunately the wind was blowing quite hard so the low numbers would be best on the West bank.

As there was another small match on the Lake they were allocated the low numbers so most of us would have to battle the wind, but still hopeful I might still get a sheltered one. It wasn’t to be as I pulled peg 40. Arriving at the peg I had the wind blowing in at me at 10-o-clock. So I assembled three rigs – a 4x14 F1 to fish top-set plus one, a 4x16 F1 to fish at top-set plus 3 or 4 sections. Plus the Ronnie rig to fish down wind.

The upshot was that the long rigs were hammering through with the wind making presentation impossible. So it was basically the Ronnie rig with caster over caster for 5 of the 6 hours of the match with 1 hour wasted trying to catch Skimmers long. But even the Ronnie’s really didn’t want to feed today.

I finished the match with a disappointing 10lb 2oz of Ronnie’s to 8oz.

Both the Silvers and the match was won by Paul Elmes (pictured below) with 18lb 8oz of Skimmers and 38lb 8oz of Carp for a total of 75lb from sheltered peg 16. Paul caught at 13 metres using soft pellet over GB laced with Micro.