avalon open sunday

this is one of my real favourite venues as it is impossible to predict as to where the winner will come from, and today was going to be no different
normally any sort of method feeder with a short hooklength isnt allowed on this venue but vic agreed to let us use 3 inch hooklength,s as an experiment shame he didnt tell leigh before the day, but then again at least it gave liegh something(else lol)to moan about, i let the oldest angler on the bank in the shape of mike west draw for me and he handed me 27 not a peg or area i really like as its the widest pegs on the lake making wag fishing hard especcially with the wind blowing in and across, its a good 40 mtr chuck and with the awkward wind even 8,s were going to be hard to get over, but i set up the shallow wag anyway, i had half an inkling to target the silvers so i set a .75grm rig for 13 mtrs to fish caster over g bait with an 18 6313 on .12. i also set up a 4x16 on .14 with a 16 8313 for corn over micro,s at 16 mtrs.
at the start i cupped in 6 balls at 13 mtrs , a decent ammount of micro,s and corn at 16 mtrs and began firing some 8,s towards the island, starting at 13 with single caster i had a few bites and a some small roach and 1 skimmer in the first hour , but there were some bubbles coming up on the 16 mtr line so i went out with a piece of corn on, and i was soon into a decent carp which i got to my topset where it swirled and came off, bugger , i refed a bit more and came back on the 13 mtr line but it was no better with only more small roach, by now the method slingers were catching with dean on 22 making a lot of noise casting the banjo method to the island and splashing carp into his net ,also tom mangnal on 14 was catching on a mixture of method,lead and wag, so i went out on the corn line again and in the next hour i had 2 carp and a skimmer , even though there were signs of fish on this line i wasnt getting a bite , in hindsight(there,s that word again)i think paste would have been the answer, but i never set a rig up for that so it wasnt.
i fished the wag for the remainder of the match(about 3 hours)and managed another 8 carp with fish to 10lb down to 3lb, i thought i had about 55lb but i thought i would be miles off the pace as tom had 16 carp, dean was admitting to 18 small ones (ye right) martin mcmahon had 16(all method chuckers)
as it turned out martin mcmahon on peg 38 won with 76.01 on the feeder
2nd dean malin 71.12 peg 22 on the feeder
3rd tom mangnal 70lb peg 14 on a variety of methods
4th t rixon 64.8 peg 27
5th steve seager 62.10 peg 32 paste
6th ray cooper 47.13 peg 29 feeder
silvers went to shane caswell with 17.3 of skimmers taken on worm on peg 9