Catch - 6 Roach, 5 Skimmers, 3 F1s, 3 Perch, 1 Tench, 2 Carp
Weather - Mild and mostly bright
Match - Open - 1st out of 14 - silvers (4th overall)
I made a very late decision to fish, since I was expecting to return from a couple of days in Christchurch with Sue today (Saturday), but managed to get away a day early, which was handy. One afternoon I left Sue with her mother and took a walk along the Royalty stretch of the Avon, including the famous parlour swim. Couldn't see any fish due to some extra water in the river, but it certainly looked inviting as did a number of other swims.
Back to today I arrived in plenty of time to have one of Di's breakfasts and those in the café loved the fact I blanked at Viaduct, all the one liners were coming out.
With 14 anglers today, we were all on Match lake, so very few spaces for the fish hide, but everyone still wanted the pegs at the top end of the lake, i.e. 11, 13 & 15. I was first into the draw and pulled 19, which is usually worth a few a fish so at least I should have a days fishing and if there weren't many carp in residence then you can usually catch a few silvers.
On the all in I started on corn without introducing any feed to see what fish were in the swim. The float hardly settled off the point of the island and I was attached to a tench. Rod Wootten next to me on p18 was still potting out his bait. Next put in I netted an F1, which was a nice start.
After an hour I only managed to add 1 carp, despite the fact there were a number showing themselves around the island, but they weren't interested in feeding. With no further bites I feed some gonuts black micros in 2 areas along the bottom of the far shelf.
It became obvious that pegs 13 and 15 were catching as was peg 1 and 24, so the carp appeared to have pushed to either end of the lake and any chance of an overall pick up was looking slim.
The remainder of the match was focused on fishing soft pellet over micros to catch some silvers, but it was proving tricky, since I couldn't get more than 1 fish from any one swim before I had to refeed, leave and try elsewhere.
I also fed caster to my left by the bush which produced 2 decent perch on prawn, plus a good skimmer on caster. I also lost 2 decent fish when the hook pulled, which was annoying.
Rod had managed a couple of decent skimmers on meat over pellet, but was generally stuggling. The only other angler I needed to worry about was Paul Faires on p7 who was catching consistently albeit mostly small roach.
I just kept plugging away picking up the odd fish and by the all out felt I had done enough to win the silvers, which is how it turned out.
The water was still very cold, however a couple more weeks of this mild weather and the fish should start waking up properly.
1. 74- 2 - Eric Fouracre (Mosella) - p132. 41- 3 - Russ Peck (Lands End) - p1
3. 38-12 - Rich Heatley (Bristol) - p15
4. 25- 6 - Ken Rayner (Colmic) - p19
5. 25- 0 - Matt Baber (Bristol) - p11
6. 21- 2 - Dave Wescott (Lands End) - p24
Silvers
1.16-14 - Ken Rayner (Colmic) - p19
2. 10-10 - Paul Faires (Thyers) - p7
3. 7- 0 - Mike Duckett (Lands End) - p5
4. 6-10 - Rod Wootten (Lands End) - p18
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