Thursday 29/10/2020 - Silverfox Local - Bradley Stoke - West Country Water Park

I believe this is the first match at this venue since it opened some 35 plus years ago. A few of us here today fished that match which I think was won by Vic Bush with one Carp, Tony Rixon had a stickleback and I had an early bath, vowing not to return. However, Just after the lockdown in June it was one place that was open so we had a knock up with plenty of Carp and big Roach caught and agreed to hold a bigger match come Autumn. Firstly, some difficult negotiation on peg fee that is normally £10. Managed to get it down to £6. Then there was the banks which aren't designed for fishing so we were limited to 24 pegs which still needed some work done to make it safe and comfortable plus some weed cutting. Thanks to Dave Haines and Mark Tanner for their hard work (video - weed cutting).

Because I was uncertain how it was going to fish in some areas and wanted everyone to have something to fish for decided to split the match into 4 sections of 6 paying top Silver and next highest weight in each.

All 24 pegs taken up early with some reserves. A few had been out practicing and had caught plenty of Roach - believe it or not some on Hemp and Tares!!

I got the draw underway with Ray Bazeley the retired Bingo caller drawing the pegs. Last two in the bag was peg 6 and 16. We all were hoping to be either in section A pegs 1 to 6 or in the Carp park. Alas Dave Willmott managed to magic peg 6 leaving peg 16 for me, obviously not where I wanted to draw. One advantage of this fishery is you can drive behind all the pegs. For company I had Stu White on my right and Dave Haines on the left. The water close in was very shallow and looked stoney, so decided to put the box in the water and after extending the legs and leveling the box I had a test sit and had a sinking feeling with the box legs sinking in to the clay until the box bottomed out. So back up on the bank with a ton of clay it was.

Knocked up some GB, set up a waggler and a 4x12 both set at the uniform Lake depth of 4 foot 6 inches. Started by feeding the waggler line with Caster and a ball of GB laced with caster and DR's at top-set plus two barrels. The wind was such that the tow against was like fishing a river so the waggler had to be dragged through and on some occasions picked up weed and with no bites went on the pole and had a few small Ronnie's up to 1/2 oz and one 1 /2 oz Carp, topping up regularly, After having 30 fish and the peg dying I decided to pack up at 13:00 and sort out the Money with Mike the owner and have a walk around to take some pictures. As expected sections B and C were fishing terrible.

I always weigh in and had 15 oz.

Hughie Evans (pictured with his catch) had the highest Silvers weight of 16 lb 10 oz from peg 3 which included a Roach of 1 lb 14 oz. Hughie caught on a 3 metre whip to hand with a small waggler rig. He fed some GB, Hemp and caster catching on DR's. His catch mainly consisted of small Ronnie's catching throughout the match.

The highest weight was caught by Steve Jefferies (pictured with a typical size Lake Carp) with 77 lb 7 oz from peg 2. Steve caught short at top-set pus two using worm hook bait over kindered GB/Caster and chopped worm.

All the fish were in excellent condition.

I think if I organised another match a change in the pegging would be necessary and limited to 18 which would allow leaving out the far bank pegs (pictured above). Nonetheless, I think most anglers found it interesting some vowing not to come back though!!

Thanks to everyone that supported this match.

Finally spare a thought for John Smith 2nd in both Silvers and overall and didn't pick up!

Result:

A Section:

1. Hughie Evans 16-10-0 peg 3

2. Steve Jefferies 77-07-0 peg 2

B Section:

1. Ricky Mills 2-09-0 peg 9

2. Tony Rixon 17-10-0 peg 12

C Section:

1. Stu White 3-12-0 peg 15

2. Lee Massey 6-04-0 peg 13 

D Section:

1. Paul Barnfield 7-07-0 peg 24

2. Martin Rayet 35-11-0 peg 23