PSV match, Avalon Fisheries. 28-06-15,

Over halfway through 2015 already, time certainly is flying by this year!!

A wet and dull start to the day was how it looked when I got out of bed at 7am, so my (not so waterproof) waterproofs were donned before I loaded the car and headed down onto the moors.
10 of us fishing the match after a few guys had decided to switch to fishing an open over at Shiplate, so a little but of room for most.
The 'cover' match secretary for the day was a mix of Adam Caswell (collected money) and Steve Burgess (sorted the pay-outs), though Mr Bush sorts the pegging.  We'd pay top 2 overall and 1 silvers pot, which was likely to be a contest between Matt Challenger and John Bradford.
We had Brian Shanks and Matty Taynton fishing today which meant that a few pellet wagglers would be flung to the island, in fact I would suggest 8 out of 10 of us would fish that, or at least try.

The windy wasn't consistent and was doing the usual blow up the lake, so any of the higher pegs would be better for silvers and carp alike, 23 back to around 16 would be good, avoiding 3 or 5 was to be my preference. Peg 11 was the golden peg and typically Adam Caswell drew it.
I held back a bit and was 'rewarded' with peg 3.... bugger. It had very little in the way of wind/ripple and I had the point of the island to fish to, but there didn't seem like many carp were around, though the reeds to my left and right were knocking around. I didn't really fancy it at all.

Avalon peg 3

I had for company, not that I could see him, was Matt Taynton on peg 5 and then he had Brian Shanks a couple of pegs along again.

I set up a pellet waggler and 4 pole rigs:
A shallow topkit rig for silvers, a depth rig for silvers at 2+2 and 13m, a margin rig for carp (unused) and a depth rig with carp in mind (unused).
For bait I had 8mm pellets and meat, some corn. Plus some caster, dead-ish maggots and some groundbait. I did have some worm which I didn't plan on using as I expected to catch over groundbait.

At the all in I fed my 13m line, margins and short line.
1st chuck on the waggler and I had a chub of 6oz, then spooked a carp......the next 45 mins was dull, I had a solitary 4lb carp and missed a couple bites. I never picked this up again during the match.
The short and long lines were properly fizzing by now, building my confidence, but this was a false dawn as it seemed like all I had was small silvers in the peg and every bait was taken by these fish, even double dendra wasn't safe.
A switch to a 2g+ rig didn't alter anything so back to the 0.6g which felt better. I soon had a crucian of a couple pound on my short line, but things were slow.

After a couple hours I suppose I had put 4lb of bits in my silvers net but it was tough with no wind on the water in front of me, my 13m was poor, it only produced 3 little skimmers all match.
Corn was the best bait thus far and my 2+2 line.

Not much happened over the next 3 or 4 hours, I plugged away getting the odd skimmer, but it seemed like they wouldn't settle down and feed and I had a few occasions where I 'pricked' the odd skimmer, come off bottom and I don't get any indications just picked up rudd.
Come the last hour I spied some carp down my left edge and although it wasn't worth trying to catch them as I was miles behind Matt and Brian, I would see how they responded to feed. After 15 minutes of tricking bait at them I had them within topkit distance down the edge and taking bait as soon as it hit the water!! The sun had obviously stirred the carp up and my peg looked somewhat better than it had 5hrs previous.

The all out sounded and I knew I had bombed out for carp and most probably silvers, I estimated around 10lb or so of silvers, the lack of ripple had put them off feeding confidently in my peg.
I packed my kit away and waited for the scales to come back along as Vic started in peg 23.

By the time they'd got to me it looked like, from a quick glance, that Lionel Legge had won with Chris Szakacs second. The silvers was going to be won by Matt Challenger with an amazing 61 or 63lb from what I could see.
My 10lb guess went an embarrassing 26lb+.....oops.

Result:
1. Lionel Legge (19) 122-7
2. Chris Szakacs (23) 111-1
3. Brian Shanks (7) 102-1...
4. Matt Taynton (5) 79-13
5. Matt Challenger (16) 61-3
6. Steve Burgess (9) 46-10
7. Adam Caswell (11) 41-15
8. Ron Hardiman (13) 33-7
9. Lee Williams (3) 26-4
10. John Bradford (21) 19-12

Silvers:
1. Matt Challenger 61-3
2. Lee Williams 26-4
3. John Bradford 19-12

So really the lack of wind deterred the silvers and the carp arrived down my edge around 4 or 5 hours too late!!
Matt Challenger fished worm and caster at 11m-ish and fed 3pts of caster and 1/2kg of worm, good angling.

Next up for me is Pawlett's Silvers Winners final on Trinity Wildmarsh, I am kinda looking forward to that.
I am off next Weds 8th, Thurs 9th and Friday 10th, so I will prob book into Sedges on the Wednesday and look for a match on the Thursday. Friday will possibly be spent roach fishing up Durleigh, where the fishing at this time of the year is usually bang-on.

Until then, Take Care.
Lee

Pawlett Match, Shiplate Hawthorn and Main lakes, 21-06-15

We originally had 22 lined up for this match but the attendance swelled up with the likes of Tom Mangnall and Mike West coming along for the ride so to speak, so another decent turn out, Pawlett do get good attendances. We had 27 fishing on the day.

I made the 20 minute trip to one of my favourite venues (I don't get to fish it enough though) and was hoping to draw anywhere on the Main lake as I had planned, accidently, to fish for the silvers and the main lake would be certain to take that prize. I say accidently as I had several pints of maggots and casters that I hadn't used at Viaduct on Saturday. The silvers fishing can be great on the lake at times and I have had several 30lb+ weights in the last few years.
On the carp side of things the obvious peg 15 would be the 'draw', despite some saying that it doesn't win all the matches there, it is seen as the plum draw and generally gives great hope for whoever draws it. But I would be happy with pretty much any peg as the lake has plenty of fish in there.
I didn't really want Hawthorn lake as I have only ever caught in the 1st and last hours in the matches I have fished there, with the middle stages being poor for me. But pegs 1 and 15 (end pegs) are decent draws as are the pegs with the boards on the far bank (I can remember the numbers).

After chatting to a good few of the guys I had a quick look at the lakes, plenty of spawning activity on all lakes was obvious and the wind was generally blowing from the house end down to peg 15 on Hawthorn and 8, 9 and 10 on the main lake. Maybe the fish would follow the wind and food to those pegs?
Back to the draw and I plucked my peg around halfway through, peg 3 on Hawthorns, I didn't think too much of it in either a positive or negative way. Eric Fouracre drew p15 on the main lake, I told him that short pole for silvers would work, or perhaps if he won it'd only count if he had 200lb.....in the end I did tell him that last years match on there was won on the method to the mud patch on the lawn bank!! Good angler, good peg.
I made my way to my peg and set about sorting my kit, I had for company on peg 1, Keith Clapp. He asked for a few pointers, I basically told him to fish long to the corner and have fun as the fish hold on a bit!!! But he's not bad at this fishing lark so he'd be ok.
On peg 4 I had Phil 'fester' Hembury, he would fish JPZ's in red colour so it turned out. Not another bait I need to learn? lol. So between us we'd have a giggle.

Looking at my swim it was clear that the fish were spawning up and down the far bank, but there were a few patches of bubbles scattered all over the peg. The far bank looked tough to get right over with plenty of vegetation overhanging, coupled with the brisk gusting wind, presentation would suffer at times along with the chances of catching up on the greenery.......plus the constant wildfowl problems!!



Hawthorn P3 l.h.m.

 

Hawthorn p3 front view

 

I knew that right across would be hard work but I also figured that it would be my main priority. I even decided to make all new rigs for the day too!!
I set up a very shallow rig for tight over, 10 inches deep, for use with banded 6 and 8mm pellet. This would double up for shallow over my short line and edges.
Another rig for 2+2 for fishing corn over 4mm pellet.
Another rig was made up for the deep nearside edges using maggots on my left and meat on the right, This rig was also suitable for a line at 11 o'clock direction at 11m, but I never tried here.
Lastly a rig for half depth in the edges as this can work well on this lake, but never for me!
I did consider a method feeder.....but I resisted temptation.

Bait was maggots, 4mm feed pellets, 6mm feed pellets, 8mm meat, corn and a few 8mm pellets for hookbait. I mixed up some green pellet groundbait for right over as a last resort.
I was ready in plenty of time and went and to have a look at the main lake from Rob Dodd's peg 3, it looked sock on for some fish.

The 10:30 all in sounded and I began by cupping some maggots down to my left and some corn and 4mm pellets on the 2+2 line. I went over with a 6mm in the band and 6mm feed in the tosspot. 5 minutes passed with a few liners from the 'busy' fish before I hooked a fish, it was a 4oz chub, this was followed by another before the ducks arrived and started to find my pellets, or at least figured where I was fishing.
I stuck with it, lifting and dropping the bait and had a few more baby chub before I had a carp of 3lb, soon followed by a couple more.

At the end of the 1st hour I had 6 chub, a roach and 4 carp. Keith had plenty of action in that he landed around 6 carp but lost plenty to the snaggy corner and his nearside reeds. Fester had some skimmers down the middle on maggot.
At this point my short line was showing plenty of fizzing so I dropped in over that and missed a bite, next drop the same so I went to the half depth rig which gave me nothing.
Back on the deck and 3 skimmers and a carp of 5lb were landed.

I went over to the far side and tried, like a numpty, to feed with the catty as the fish were coming to the noise of the pellets from the tosspot, all this seemed to do was attract more wildfowl who would climb onto the far bank to much my miss-fired pellets and also to up-end and feed on the bait in the water. It didn't seem to annoy the fish as much as me and I managed a few more chub to 1lb. But the carp were hard to tempt.
Keith carried on netting a few carp and losing a few too.....Fester was getting the odd carp now.
We were now 3hrs in and my tally hadn't changed much, though I did catch a carp shallow down my right edge.

Into the 4th hour and I lost 4 carp on the bounce, 2 to my keepnets which rarely happens to me, 1 to the reeds and 1 to a duck that hit the line when I was playing the fish......I wasn't having fun, I had 20-odd assorted ducks in my peg, 4 stayed between my keepnets for a while.
I decided to cup in a few pots of groundbait across in the attempt to draw fish in, this had the desired effect as soon enough tails were waving......and the ducks saw this and bottomed up over the spots.
The fish didn't care and I managed several carp (and chub) over this area, a couple on corn and the others on lifted and dropped pellet.

I then came short over the 2+2 line as I couldn't get anything on the bottom despite the fishing, and this gave me a couple carp late on, both 8lb fish, plus I had a couple 4lbers down my edges.
The all out was called moments after I netted my 12th carp and my clicker should 60lb (yes I am getting there with the clicker). Plus I had around 5 or 6lb of chub and skimmers.

I reckoned on Mr Clapp having near on 90lb as I had heard him netting a good few, he insisted they were mostly 2lb squeakers. I also reckoned Fester had caught me up. I went and had a quick check with Colin Haggett on main lake peg 1 to see how he got on and he said a couple carp but Eric on p15 had 'emptied it'.

I packed up and took most of my kit to the car while we waited for the scales and it sounded like the main lake had been slow and the silvers hadn't fed or they hadn't been fished for. On my lake most reckoned on 40-50lb.
First to weigh was Keith, and to my surprise his 70lb estimate and squeakers call was true and he weighed 71lb 3oz which was loads of little carpletts.
I weighed next and my 60lb clicker was spot on and 60lb 14oz of them was joined by 7lb 12oz of silvers. 68lb 10oz being my total.
Fester popped 34lb 13oz on the scales. As the scales made our way all the way along we saw plenty of decent weights between 40 and 57lb, infact it was a good close competitive match on Hawthorn lake.

I went and waited with a few of the guys for the weighing in on the Main lake to arrive, and rumour had it that it was tricky, though Eric had 175lb or so, the next best looked to be around 50lb and that me and Keith had made the top 3 which I didn't deem likely before the match.
That's how it turned out. So a little pick-up brightened my day.

Results:
1st Eric Fouracre, 175lb 2oz (new lake record). Main p15, method feeder to the lawn.
2nd Keith Clapp, 71lb 3oz. Hawthorn p1.
3rd Lee Williams, 68lb 10oz. Hawthorn p3.
4th Mike West, 59lb 13oz. Main p14b (section win).
5th Derek Beard, 57lb. Hawthorn p10 (section win).

Silvers
1st Steve Fouracre, 19lb 8oz. Main p6 (feeder, maggot).
2nd Dave Sawyer, 10lb 12oz. Main p10.

Weigh Sheet....

So it was an ok, despite it turning out as expected with Main lake winning and my usual beginning/end type match occurring yet again, and them pesky ducks possibly cost me a few fish, but then Keith lost a decent amount too.....oh and I caught on corn.....I am slowly getting there!!

Next up for me is a match on Sunday with the PSV guys over at Avalon.....the silvers look appealing!

Until then, have fun.
Lee

p.s. Vic is holding a bunch of Silvers matches on Saturdays in September with the best 8 from 10 matches counting......though I am sure you can fish them as single matches (cant be sure though...will check) details:

SATURDAY SILVERS LEAGUE
10 MATCH SERIES BEST 8 WEIGHTS TO COUNT
Entry £20.00 100% payout
Pools on the day £21.00 including (£1) GOLDEN PEG
MAX 30pegs...
DATES:
26th Sept
3rd Oct
10th Oct
17th Oct
24th Oct
31st Oct
7th Nov
14th Nov
21st Nov
28th Nov

Club match today produced 7 Silver weights over 30lb with 48.10 winning and 44lb 2nd made up of good Roach,Hybirds,Skimmers,Bream and Tench on caster, worm , pellet or corn.
To book in call Vic on 07977 210078.