Monday 30 December 2013

Avalon Winter Teams of Three, Round 2, December 29th 2013 - Avalon Match Lake

Yesterday's match was the 2nd in the Winter Teams of Three series down on Avalon Match lake. My Woolavy's Wanderers side had posted a 2nd place result in the last round, only being denied top spot by weight. Myself, James (Withers) and Paul (Wharton), were looking forward to this and generally seemed confident of doing ok, if, the weather and draw paid us a bit of luck.....

After a sharp frost overnight, I made my way to the lake for 8:10, it was a rolling draw meaning as soon as we paid our pools we could pick our sections and peg number. James and Paul arrived 10 minutes after me coinciding with a sharp, heavy and cold shower. We paid our monies and I wrote the 3 names on the sheet, I let James pick the section I would be in, he drew C, thus meaning he was in B section and Paul in A. I picked peg 7, so I'd have permanent peg 40, James on p24 and Paul p10.
Not a bad pick with 24 being a flyer and the other 2 being ok (Vic has tried to keep the better pegs in this series, but with fish being fish.......).

I quickly made my way round to my peg, luckily I could park behind my swim, which is a bonus.
Thankfully I had made a few, well 5, rigs on Saturday and popped  my new Daiwa reels onto my 10ft feeder rods as I wanted to try these out.
Water levels were up a couple of inches and the water was well coloured, more so given the rain and wind we have been having of late.

View of Peg 40, Avalon match lake


As I was unloading the car, Phil Clapp stopped to say hi and informed me of his Sedge's side's draw, he had p33 but even better for them was Jamie Cook had the in-form peg (Peg 5) and Keith Clapp, who was my knock-out opponent, was in his favoured (well he always wins from that peg) Peg 20. So my knock-out progression looked to be over unless I bagged up and Sedge's looked, on paper, the team to beat on the day,
Also Paul Chapman arrived netless, so I lent him a landing net and a keepnet, while Phil also lent him a net for silvers.

For company I had Mosella's Pete Wild to my right, with Paul Chapman the next along. Opposite me I had Mosella's local star in Tom Mangnall. To my left on peg 42 I could just make out John Andres.

Rig wise I set up a 0.6g NG Silverfish Caner for 13m (skimmers the target), a NG Decker 0.5g for if carp turned up in numbers and a 0.3g NG Silverfish Caner for a close in line (roach?).
I also set up, twice, after snagging a reed that was under the surface near the island, a 3AA waggler for anything that swims.
A lead and bread/pellet rod was assembled and a small cage feeder rod was put together with corn or maggot the hookbait for this. Both were clipped up for 2 spots near the island.

Bait wise I had 1/2pt of wetted micros, 1/2pt of 4mm pellets, 1/2pt corn, 1/2pt caster, 1pt of red maggot, 1/2 pint of pinkie and mixed up 2pts of groundbait (mixed in a bait tub as left mixing bowl at home). I also had some expanders in 2, 4 and 6mm sizes, some 6 and 8mm pellets for in the band and some bread to try on the lead.

After plumbing and re-assembling my waggler rod I was ready. The all in was called and I lobbed the lead out, within 10 seconds I could hear that Jamie over on peg 5 had a carp on..!! Wall and Writing sprung to mind!!
I gave the lead 10 minutes before I had a few casts on the waggler, this bought a single roach before snagging something on the bottom, so I had to pull for a break, which resulted in me losing a waggler (last seem drifting about like a giant lighthouse over towards pegs 7-10).

I fed my 2 long pole lines after 1/2hr of the match, 1 line with corn and 4mm's for carp at the 1pm position and wetted micros and a few reds on the 11am line. Float visibility was awful with no background for the contrast, I had to keep it in about a 4 inch area between the reflection of two trees.

I chucked the feeder out, while setting up another waggler, and the tip remained motionless. Back onto the lead, the bread didn't bring a response, but the 6mm pellet I did try saw a 3oz roach landed....nice. I gave the wag a few casts, but this only saw a couple roach put into the net.
Meanwhile the two Jamies, Cook on p5 and Parkhouse on p44, had landed a few carp. Paul Chapman had landed a couple and I think Pete on p38 had landed one. Tom, across from me had lost a foul hooked carp and landed a few decent silvers.

I had a look on the pole line over the corn and pellet, without a bite, never to try again for the remainder of the day, so no more of that. The topkit plus 1 section was tried throughout the match and gave me a single 1oz rudd.
So I pretty much stuck to the pole line over micros. At around 12:30 I had a flurry of activity bringing me a decent skimmer of a pound, a few 6-8oz blades and a solitary carp, which was welcome. Then it died.
I did put together a margin rig for some carp and I fed towards the empty pallet of peg 41 and by the snags to my right, but this was pointless as I never even had a bite from either.

The last two hours were very slow for me, I had a handful of roach on the wag or pole lines. Single red maggot the only bait giving a response. The lead and feeder rods didn't give me a fish other than the early 3oz roach. Meanwhile Pete landed some decent skimmers/bream from his long pole line, Paul on p37 had landed 3 carp and hooked a 4th on the whistle.
Elsewhere on the lake, Vic Bush on peg 23 had a few carp, with my team-mate on peg 24 landing 3 carp and a few silvers. Keith on p20 was flying and looked to be winning, according to the bank walkers that is. The 2 Jamies had maybe 30-odd pounds each and Tom Mangnall had spent 3/4 of an hour landing a double figured carp on no5 elastic. Everyone else seemed to be struggling.

The all out sounded at 3pm, if it was not a team match then maybe I would have been tempted to pack up early, but luckily I had packed most of my rigs away by 3pm and I had loaded the car by 3:20.

I thought to myself I was maybe 2nd last in section as Pete, Paul, Jamie Parkhouse and Steve Fouracre on peg 48 had landed a decent amount of fish, while the rest seemed to have a few more than me.
I made my way to the scales, which were approaching peg 6, Jamie Cook had put 36lb 15oz on the scales from p5. The rest of the section didn't give much in the way of weights, only Tom Mangnall on p10 putting double figures on the sheet, his net gave him 20lb 7oz (including top silvers of 8lb 13oz).
Most of the other weights in 'A' section were about 3lb or so.

'B' section was weighed, p20, Keith Clapp amassed 59lb 6oz. Vic on p23 saw his efforts total 39lb 10oz. James Withers(my team mate) put a whole 12lb 14oz on the team sheet. Other than that there was a few 7-8lb weights, an 11oz effort and Mike West moaned his was to 8lb 8oz of silvers from peg 26.

'C' section, where I was, produced 6 weights of double figure, which was the most of the 3 groups of sections. Pegs 30, 32 and 33 had just over 12lb between them before Martin Weston (15lb 4oz), Paul Chapman (17lb 5oz) and Pete Wild (13lb 5oz) did a bit better. My carp went 3lb 6oz and my silvers 5lb 5oz for a total of 8lb 11oz. John Andres weighed 3lb 12oz, which is well short of what I though he had. Then came Jamie Parkhouse, Chris Derreck and Steve Fouracres, they put 30lb 7oz, 10lb 5oz and 24lb 9oz on the scales respectively.

A good few guys left before the results were called but I hung around for these and they were:

1st - K Clapp - 59.06
2nd - V Bush - 39.10
3rd - J Cook - 36.15

1st in silvers - T Mangnall - 8.13
2nd in silvers - M West - 8.02

3 section winners were M Graham, J Withers and J Parkhouse

Top teams on the day were Mosella with 27 points, Sedges had 25 points and Enterprise Angling amassed 21 points.

My Woolavy Wanderers side totalled 20 points, the same as Over 50's, but again lost out on position on weight. We are now 4th in the league, which considering I am the only 'regular' match angler in the side, is pretty good, better that I really expected. But we will hope to do better in a couple of weeks time in the 3rd round of the series.


Weigh Sheets - Avalon Winter Teams of 3, 29/12/13
 

All in all it was a difficult day for the majority, trying to pick out the odd 2nd or 3rd carp seemed to be the order of the day for 28 or so of us, maybe if I had sat on the tip all day I may have caught a couple more carp than I did, but maybe I wouldn't, as it was a team event it is better to put something on the scales, more so given our position after the 1st round.
Yesterday some people even struggled to put 4lb on the scales, but well done to Sedges and Mosella, they did well on the day.

Next up for me is possibly a match on Sedges Brick lake, if not then it is the next round of the Avalon Winter Teams of 3, this is on the 12th Jan.

Until next time take care

Lee

Results board for
Avalon Winter Teams of 3
end of play after Round 2.
 
 
 


 

No comments:

Post a Comment