Since my last post.....

Things have been busy-ish for me recently, with the school holidays and stuff taking up time, I have failed in keeping this blog thingy up.

So a quick (I hope) summary of my recent goings on.(and have just realised I never published my Avalon write-up).

I had a pleasure session up Durleigh last week, it was on the 20th, I fished up on the Lodge Bank, a swim along the Lawns area was ok, I mostly fished the 3m whip only for around 4.5 to 5hrs. It was a fish a chuck. But I did have a long pole line with balled groundbait in case any skimmer/bream/carp arrived as a few better fish were mooching on the surface.
I filled the best part of the bottom 3 rungs of my net with roach, rudd, perch and small skimmers, all to around 12oz. I had at least 70lb of fish, I struggled to lift the net, and had to tip over half away before a quick snap-shot of some of my catch.
I found the best bait for the better stamp of fish was corn, even the billy perch took a liking to it.
The long (13m) pole line bought better fish, but nothing substantial, and I was getting pestered by whip fish, even 3oz roach were taking double corn or big lumps of paste on a size 10 hook. That was hard work. So pretty much stayed on the whip. I was catching 12" deep in around 2.5ft of water, but I did shallow up to 6" deep and found a better stamp.
It really was hectic. I fed 6pts of hemp and 2 of caster and 2 tins of corn.

My swim...

A few of my catch

After that day I had an evening match on the canal lake on Sedges, the last of the summer. I landed just over 29lb and 4th in the match. It was hard work though. Jamie Cook won it I think with around 50lb.

 

The Saturday just passed had me fishing the last of Clevedon's Saturday Series. This time on Acorn's Top Lake. I had no chance of getting anywhere in the series, but it was an afternoons fishing,

This turned out pants for some, the fishery was struggling with oxygen levels and had pumps and aerators on to try and up the water quality.

Anyways I drew what was peg 10 for the match, right on the corner on the road bank (I would not have even pegged it), I had the aerator in front of me at around 8m and the irrigation pump on the main lake behind me making a hell of a noise and blowing diesel fumes at my pegs. Thankfully this was only on for around 2hrs, but long enough to make my head ache and eyes water.

Rod Wotton was opposite me, he was less than pleased too.

 

Anyways I struggled for bites in my 4 baited areas(paste line at 10m, micros line at 8m and caster line at 8m, plus to my left on the top kit), I did have maybe 4lb of bits and a single carp by the time I tipped back with over half an hour left. Rod had struggled, but managed 4 or 5 carp while I packed up. He caught to the end bank, and had a chance of 1st or 2nd in the series.

I couldn't fish my end bank properly due to it constantly being full of crap, I cleared it with a pole cup every so often, but it only stayed clear for a few minutes. There were odd carp taking bits off the scum, but no numbers of fish.

My open water swims only gave odd bits to soft pellet over micro. Maybe the fish didn't want to be near the aerator.

A bit further up the lake Brian Slipper and Kev Perry caught a few, I couldn't see the other 6 and don't know how they did.

The results saw Mark Bromsgrove win with 53lb, Bri Slipper was 2nd with 38lb, Kev Perry had  27lb for 3rd.

Mark won the series and £100, he had 6 points from his best 3 results. Good fishing.

Rod was second in the series with 7 points.

The noisy neighbour on the main lake

Duff swim for my match.

 

 

On Sunday I fished a match up Durleigh with (or should I say for) the PSV guys, for a match against Frys. I turned out to be the sole PSV representative.

I drew peg 16, which was about 5yrds from where I fished in the week.

To sum up my match, I wasted 2hrs on the tip for a 4lb bream and a small hybrid, after the pegs either side of me had bream. The other 4hrs was spent on the whip for 24lb of roach, the perch and rudd never showed, possibly due to the wind blowing into my bank and the cloudy weather (it was blowing towards the far bank in the week, in the sun).

I weighed 29lb 8oz and was leading for the first 6 or 7 pegs. But after that there were a couple 30lb+ weights and I think a 48lb catch won it. But it was decent fishing again. I should have stayed on the whip, I would have had maybe 35lb+ if I had stuck with it.





I had less fish on corn (as expected) and only fed 1/2pt caster and less than a pint of hemp, but they were not responding as well, probably due to the wind....

 

I had a 3hr pleasure session on Tuesday evening, on Walrow Snags pond, I took my daughter with me, I had wanted to catch bream on the pole, but alas they never showed, but I had a few silvers. My daughter had loads of roach, rudd and perch on the whip and caught more than me (as expected). But I enjoyed fishing in over 14ft of water, it made a change. I shall have another go next week maybe.

 

 

Next up is the 2 day match/festival on Sedges this weekend. Maybe I will do ok....let's hope so.

 

Take care and tight lines.

Lee



 

Pawlett Club Match - Avalon Fisheries - 11/08/13,, etc

This week has been a week of difference for me, firstly I was to go on holiday on Monday morning early, but had to spend £100 on a new tyre as one of mine had a nail in the outer wall (I noticed the puncture last sunday). So loading the car etc took a touch longer, but we got away around 10am.
We were heading to Trippenkennet Farm Campsite/fishery, near to the towns of Ross-on-Wye, Hereford and Monmouth. I did plan on a spot of barbel fishing, but heavy rain meant I put some of my match kit in the car instead, to use on the lakes on site.

The holiday was good enough, my fishing consisted of 1 evening and 1 day session. The evening session saw me land over 30 carp over 2lb (average 2.5lb) and around 40lb of silvers and smaller carp. The day session saw my clicker hit 57 carp over 2lb (ave 2.5lb) and over 60lb of silvers, for a total of over 200lb I would guess.
Fishing was comfortable, but the getting the feeding was important. I only had 1 carp over 5lb over the 2 sessions and some bream to 4lb or so. I also had some nice roach, crucians and small tench. It really was a pleasant couple of days. The carp did fight about 3 times their weight having hardly been fished for. Being on 90 mins away I will visit again.

 

Trippenkennet Farm Pleasure Lake.



On the way home on Thursday we had a scare, as we approached the Thornbury junction of the M5 from the north a bang on the roof was heard, a look in the mirror saw a bungee dangling down, so a quick veer off the main motorway and onto the slip road was needed. Sadly/luckily/unluckily, my rod holdall decided to make it's bid for freedom 20yrds up the slip road, and all I saw was a Daiwa Airity Rod bag sliding along the road, fortunately the van behind me noticed what was occurring and stopped immediately to rescue my stuff.....we squeezed the bag into the car and headed home.( a bungee had opened up and the force of travel pushed the holdall off the roof)

When we got home I checked my kit and found that I must have had slightly golden parts as other than the holdall, the only damage was a few scuffs to a landing net pole and a whip, also a couple end-caps on my pole were scratched......phew!!

Dead, but impressed with it's durability at 70mph...

 

Anyways I decided to have a few hours on Trinity Woodlands on friday, just to check my kit over, and had intended of targeting the skimmers mostly. Sadly the skimmers never played ball, I only had a handful of small ones upto 2lb. But I had dozens of carp to 15lb, starting on the lead bought me a dozen fish, then the skimmer line bought me 1 a chuck...fun on light kit. By thje end of the day i was catching 12" deep on the topkit, what I did notice was that the fish caught off the bottom were somewhat smaller than the shallow fish (the last 10 I had were all between 7 and 15lb).

 

So onto todays match, at Avalon fishery.

After a little chit chat the draw was done, and I had peg 13, on the left hand bank, halfway along, not great but not the worst choice. For company I had Mike West(his 1st match with the club) on golden peg 12. Other than Phil Clapp and Rich Coles on pegs 33 and 32 opposite, I couldn't see anyone.

 

I set up a paste rig for 7m at the 10am position, a very close in the edge rig on the top kit to my left and banded 8mm pellet, a skimmer rig for 13m in front where I fed chopped worm and caster in balls of groundbait, the same rig will do for a micro/soft pellet at 6m at 1pm position.

A pellet wag and lead rod were assembled for across towards the island.

Peg 13 at Avalon

 

The all in sounded and I baited all the spots and cast the wag out, I promptly had a bite and lost the fish, 2nd cast I was up a stray branch which was difficult to see, bugger, I had to re-tackle, a few casts later bought a fish, nice.

A few moments later my match went tits up. I decided to chop some worm up to pot over the skimmers line, and on the 3rd set of chopping I managed, somehow, to chop my little finger, blood pissed everywhere, it did sort of hurt, but the bleeding showed no sign of stopping. I carried on, but found casting a rod painful and messy(blood dripping/flying as I cast). So gave that up for the day, and any chance of framing went.

I rapidly set up a 3m whip to fish shallow caster, at least I could occupy myself.

So a quick look on the long pole line, which had bubbles, saw me find a snag in the form of 15lb line and branches/sticks, this ran from the tree opposite to about 7m in front of me. I managed to catch this twice, once snapping my laccy(I did get float and laccy back thanks to the lead rod), the 2nd time I found it I ended up just trashing the rig. So I gave this line up, plus the bleeding was not showing signs of stopping and I was struggling to hold the pole at 13m with a throbbling hand... I had also dropped my choppie scissors into the water....I later found them, luckily.

 

So for the last 3hrs or so I combined fishing the whip, caster over caster 12" deep, and fishing paste/whole worms on the same line as I was feeding small balls of GB laced with micros every 10 small fish. I caught plenty of rudd to 6oz, perch to 3oz, a few roach and odd minnow, all on caster of bits of worm (neither was better, so mostly used caster)

I also continued to feed and try the margin line, but never had a bite there all afternoon.

 

Meanwhile Mike on p12 had taken the mickey somewhat, but he was doing his best to lose as many carp as possible, I think he lost about 20, landing 8.....he must try -- but not pull -- harder. But in the end he did well.

A lot of others were struggling as a few walkers appeared, Tom Mangnall said he had 10 in the 1st hour and that's it, Rich Coles saw a carp jump from his keepnet, into his landing net before escaping.

 

My bleeding did stop after 2.5hrs, my shorts were a lovely purple colour in places. But holding the pole still hurt as my hand throbbed.

 

The all out sounded at 4:30, I was pleased it was over. I commented to Mike that I think I had maybe 6lb of whip caught fish alongside my single 5lb carp. He had 8 carp and a couple skimmers.

 

I packed away my mess and found my scissors, they were arm deep slightly under the platform.

The scales arrived at my peg, there was a 48lb weight from p1, Eric F. had 62lb, Martin Heard had 49lb before Mike put 44lb 3oz on the scales. So no big weights like the venue had been doing recently. My carp went 5lb 1oz and the whip fish weighed 12lb 11oz.

 

My silvers were the best until the scales got to peg 30 where Jamie Cook put 19lb 4oz of mixed silvers on the scales, caught on small bits of worm both down the edge and in front. This scuppered my silvers chances for this week, but in reality my chopping skills cost me as I think I could have had a good few carp. Oh well.

 

The scales continued the journey, with only Phil Clapp putting a decent weight of silvers on the scales, his went 16lb 5oz.

 

Weigh Sheets....



 

There were 1 or 2 anglers who didn't weigh, who would have likely picked up at least a section win, something I learned a while back was to weigh in unless you are 100% sure you wont pick-up...Tom Mangnall would have won the section if not more with the 10 carp he landed....

 

Results

1st - Keith Clapp - p28 - 108lb 12oz

2nd - Vic Bush - p18 - 69lb 11oz

3rd - Eric Fouracre - p5 - 62lb 2oz

 

Silvers

Jamie Cook, peg 30,  19lb 4oz

 

Sections, all by default

s1) Martin Heard - p9 - 49lb

s2) Chris 'Giffy' Ware - p21 - 24lb 15oz

s3) Jason King - p38 - 39lb 10oz

 

So all in all a difficult day for most with Keith doing well with his weight, I think he fished a small feeder. If, in hindsight, I had fished the whip all day, I could have won the silvers, but in spending an hour trying to catch a skimmers or tench, I could have put another 5lb in my net. Plus the wasted time re-tackling and chopping my finger didn't help.

Hopefully that's all my bad luck for a while.

 

Next up for me.....not sure yet. May find a match for next Sunday, but in the meantime it's back to work.

 

Take Care and Stay Safe

 

Lee

 

29/8/13..........just realised I hadn't posted this!!

 

 

 

 



Pawlett Club Match - Trinity Wildmarsh Lake - 04/08/13

A quick write up today as need to pack the camping (and some angling) kit ready for a few days on a working farm between Ross-on-Wye and Hereford. They have a lake on site...Bargain. Plus the Wye is close enough for a barbel session.

The day started well, not, with me going to Sainsbury's to check the car's tyre pressures, 3 were ok and duly topped up to 'full load levels', but the 4th was down to 10psi....puncture. So that was topped up as well. I popped home to get my 12v pump, just in case I needed it later. Also informed the wifey to call a couple places to make sure they have tyres if that one is needed to be changed.

Anyways, back to today, it was a Memorial match on Trinity Waters' Wildmarsh lake, the largest on site and a good variety of tactics for many species can work. We had 29 fishing and were using pegs 1-15, 20, 22 and 50-67. The island and main spit pegs were not 'in'. Also, un-be known to me there was a gathering/presentation/grub do at Pawlett Legion after the match, which sadly I can't/couldn't make as I never knew and have stuff to sort.

To the draw, I hoped for a peg in the high 50's, 20, 22 or maybe peg 67(next to the car park). I didn't fancy any of the pegs 1-15 as I never see any consistency in the results I read from that area. But saying that the wind was pushing into that bank at a decent rate, which also meant the rain would be face on for those along that area.

Into the bag goes my right hand, out comes peg 8.......ball cocks. Not at all what I wanted and knew that any framing chance was unlikely. But I was here and so I trundled off. Eric Fouracre drew well (67) as did soon to be daddy- Vince Brown (59). Mike Davis was on 22, a peg that should be ok.

I arrived at my peg, the water was chocolate brown with a decent ripple and the rain blowing in.
I had Kev Crouch on my right in peg 7, he too was despondent about his peg, to his right was Brian Gattiss, who too admitted he wouldn't choose this bank.

My peg - Peg 8 on Wildmarsh

 



I duly mixed up some groundbait, 1.5kg in total, a 50/50 sensas Lake and sensas Noir mix as I hoped for some of the bream, tench and decent roach that live in the lake, I figured that the majority of carp would be up the other end, or at least along the road bank. I also had some worm, caster, corn, meat and paste with me.

Rig wise I had a standard running feeder rig on my S7 competition feeder rod, this would be cast 2/3rds of the way across towards the spit (in line with the 3rd tree from the right). 4lb maxima to a 0.14 hooklength and a 16 B911-f1 hook.
For the pole I set up a chopped worm and caster rig for almost 13m in the direction of the corner of the spit opposite, this was on middy solid 8/10 laccy. A 0.6g NG Caner float, bulked 18" from the hook with1 dropper. Lines/hook were 0.14>0.10>18 B911-f1. Depth was around 6ft.
My 2nd pole rig was for my margins and was 0.20>0.18> a size 14 B911x hook. This was under a 0.2g NG Margin float and middy solid 18/20 elastic. This was around 2.5ft deep close to marginal cover. Baits for this were meat and corn.
Lastly I set up a paste rig for 6m, slightly to my right on a shallower spot. Lines and hooks were the same as the margin, but elastic was a 14/16, hook was a 12 carp feeder hook and float was an NG Power Pencil(0.3g).

On the whistle I cupped two balls of groundbait/cw&c at 13m then balled 8 decent sized balls over the same spot. Some meat/corn went into each margin swim and a half cup of paste pieces went on that line.
I started on the feeder, with worm on the hook and was into a fish after 20 mins, a small carp of 1.5lb was netted, 10 minutes later a skimmer of 12oz landed, then it died. I also managed to tangle my feeder set-up so re-rigged.
Not much had been caught along my bank after an hour and people were already walking the banks.
Eric F. on p67 had a few carp though, but I couldn't see what everyone else was doing, except Mike on 22 and those right at the far end.

The 2nd hour saw me on the pole and it was hard work in the wind, so much so that I tangled my 13m rig and re-tied a new one through boredom. I did manage a couple skimmers and a few roach on worm. Kev on peg 7 landed a carp on the feeder. It was difficult for most.

The 3rd hour started with a quick look down my margins, and 1st drop on the r/h side I missed a bite, 2nd drop I was into a carp, it was netted after a spirited fight and the 4lb fish was a welcome bonus.
I never had another bite from either margin swim.
Alas, a quick look on the paste line never saw the float move, something that happened a couple of times, so that rig was forgotten.

The last 2.5hrs were un-eventful, I had maybe 5 or 6 roach upto 6oz, but no carp, tench, bream or other lumpier fish. A lot of people started packing up with an hour left, news had filtered round that Eric, Vince and  P. Furlong were likely candidates for the top 3 spots.

The all out sounded and most were pleased that the match was over. There was to be a lot of DNW's today as I could see swims vacant before the all out.

I loaded my car and made my way to the scales, when I arrived Vince was leading the way with 55lb but said Eric on 67 was likely to have more. But given the wide range of carp in the lake (1lb - mid 20's resident) means that it can be hard to gauge other anglers catches. ChrisWare had 21lb 3oz split almost equally carp and silvers.
I watched a few anglers weigh in and when it came to peg 63, P.Furlong put 43lb on the scales to move into 2nd spot. Next up to weigh was Eric on p67, he popped his catch onto the scales, registering 49lb 9oz putting him into 2nd.

Next up to bother the scalesman was me, my carp went 6lb 7oz and the silvers 9lb 1oz, so 15lb 8oz was not too bad given most people had DNW'd with less.
The scales moved along to weigh the last few and there were more low weights.

The weigh sheet (less p22 who weighed 6lb-ish)



So all in all it was a tough day and the highlight for most was seeing Chris Pike on peg 65 breaking his pole on a rampant carp, he duly lost the fish but retrieved the carbon about 30 minutes later. He also lost a lump 1st cast of the match, that snapped his mainline when the fish was near netting.

Results:
1st - Vince Brown - 55lb 4oz from peg 59
2nd - Eric Fouracre - 49lb 9oz from peg 67
3rd - P. Furlong - 43lb 5oz from peg 63

The best silvers weight went to Eric and Chris Ware with 10lb 5oz each, with my 9lb 1oz next best,

I am pretty sure I should have won the silvers, but lost track of time, I am sure if I started a shorter caster line I would have had a few pounds of roach. In fact I avoided caster over my 13m line as I was getting too many small roach taking caster or small bits of worm. I really should have adopted the fish for anything approach rather than hope for the bigger skimmers.

That'll do for now as need to get sorting my holiday stuff (I have to get a puncture/new tyre sorted in the morning as well).

Next up match wise is Thursday evening on Sedges, then I am fishing Durleigh with Clevedon. Pawlett have a match on Avalon, but I enjoyed the ressie a couple weeks back.

Tight Lines and Take Care

Lee.