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!!