weds avalon

after sunday,s match which was hard but fair i was expecting it to be a bit harder to get people to turn up for todays bash as people expect the chance to catch 100 lb or more , but avalon aint like that as you need to fish for each fish with every one being hard won , but thats the attraction for those that enjoy it and luckily i do, plus all the other venues we fish like viaduct,landsend, bullocks, acorn and so on ,they all have there good and bad points but they are all enjoyable to fish as they all require different approaches.
back to avalon and roger andoniou drew for me and handed me 32 which was on the third island up on the right hand bank, mint, park behind my peg to drop my gear off then move the van back to the carpark.
with the island only 20 mtrs away it was a short chuck on the pelletwag so a 2 ssg j range styro wag with a 16 b960 on .18 , the pole was put together to fish 16 mtrs and 19 mtrs (god thats hard), i saved the rig from sunday which was a 4x14 j3 and a 4x12 impact 10 for shallow just in case both with the same hooks as the wag rig .
for company i had chris fox on the right and steve kedge on the left, chris was the one to watch as he would fish for the carp and steve would probably target the silver vermin so my quid with him was already mine.
at the start i cupped in some 6,s at 16 mtrs and began firing 6,s towards the island trying hard not to feed into the reeds. it took a while to get a bit of fizz started and 30 mins to get my first bite which resulted in a 4 pounder gracing the net, by cupping some 6,s in after every fish i kept putting odd fish in the net , it wasnt manic but with no one seeming to be setting it alight it seemed to turning into a bit of a plod, i did try an odd sortie to 19 mtrs and i did manage a couple of fish but it was hard work as 19 mtrs excerts a tremendious ammount of leverage at the anglers end, it was agood job is wasnt windy . 2 hours from the end and i decided to pick up the wag rod as the reeds were now twitching like mad as i had managged to put some pellets into the reeds so the fish were going to stay put . so providing i got the wag to slide down a reed stem i could expect a bite, trouble is with this style of fishing you tend to hook stems and pull even more over the water making it even harder to get in tight but i did manage it a few times a few times to get 6 more carp in the net.
chris at the next peg had a right torrid losing 16 3 the the carp losing fish on any method he cared to try, he must have been watching tim clark on his right as i think he lost the same number due to the fish swimming through a gap in the island but we have come to excpect this with tim.
kedgey on my left did as i excpected and was admitting to 30 lb of silvers and as he had only used his topset it shows that the venue does have some silvers mileage to it.
as it was my 16 carp and a handful of skimmers went 87.12 which was enough on the day
2nd went to gary wall on 48 with 73.8 on paste down the edge
3rd roger(old git)andoniou 57.10 on peg 38
4th phil(fabsy)harding51.10 on peg 44
5th tim clarke 44.4 peg 28
6th martin lenaghan 42.2 peg 26
silvers went to steve kedge with 29.6 on peg 37 all roach caught up in the water on caster just using his topset
you may be wondering as to the whereabouts of a certain mr malin, well he decided not to fish the match but go on the speci lake to catch some skimmers he also took the fish finder to see if he could see where the fish were when they fizz. after the match i went up to see him and see what he had caught, and he pulled out his net which had about 60 lb of skimmers in it, not bad for a lake with no silvers in it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
and the fizz all he could tell was that all the fish seemed to 2 foot off the bottom all the time but if you put a bait at the same depth you wouldnt get a bite, we can only assume that that the fish go down take a mouthful the come up and eat it then go down and take another mouthful, which makes a lot of sense as the double bulk and lift method works so well for the skimmers