Avalon open

Managed to scrape together 22 for this match which wasn't to bad considering there were several other matches on today.
Stopped off at Landsend fishery for breakfast and really good today, very nearly a 5.
Everyone turned up on time so I got the draw started, Rob watts drew for me and pulled out 20, then pulled out 21 for himself.
20 has a lot of for , its a good pellet wag peg aswell as lead , as there is a small gap in the island with a Bush in it.

As I don't like doing the lead, the pellet wag was assembled, along with 2 pole rigs, one 4x16 rig for banded 6mm hard pellet over loose Fed 4,s, and a .8g drennan as5 for maggot or caster over groundbait, the pellet rig was to fish at 14 mtrs just off to the left and the groundbait line was off to the right at 13 mtrs, and I put together a rig to fish with meat down the right hand margin .
At the start I fed the various pole line but began on the wag, although the wind was slightly off our backs there was enough of it blowing up the lake to make the float travel to quickly through the peg. I did give it nearly an hour , for one missed bite, by now Rob to my left was getting some skimmers on soft pellet on the pole, but Pete nurse to my right on 19 was in the same boat as me with nothing in the net.
So I started on the maggot line but after a few small roach I switched to the pellet line with 6mm pellet, I was soon getting bites and had a run of sensible skimmers up to 2lb.

But I over did the swim by feeding to much trying to get carp to move in, that was a definite mistake as I thought one or two of the silver slayers would be emptying it, anyway I blew that swim away LOL. Of what I could see no one was doing to well so it was going to be a tight affair, which is nice as no one was going to run away with it.
In the end I did my best to make the wag work and was rewarded with some carp, but the wind was making life difficult, and the fish didn't want to come out tofu the snags, even though I fed short, I had to get as tight to the snags a possible, leading to the loss of a couple of floats and several hooklenth, with there being no leaves on the branches it was nigh on impossible to see the horrible spindly twigs, I'm sure if I owned a fishery there wouldn't anything that even remotely resembled a tree or Bush within 12 foot of the bank cos tying hooks is a right chore, but the gizmo hook Tyer has helped.
I had three bites down the edge , missed one and had a skimmer and my biggest carp of the day of about 7lb

I thought I was well off the pace, as I thought Pete to my right had beaten me as he had a good run of carp on the lead in the last hour, but it turned out they were quite small.
As is normal on this venue it was a close affair with Paul elmes on peg 16 came out on top with 57lb which included the top silver's weight on the day with 18.8 of skimmers to go with his 38.8 of carp, most of his fish coming on the pole with soft pellet,
2nd Joe McMahon on peg 37 with 56.6
3rd Steve seager on 44 with 48.3
4th me with 46.9
5th Vic Bush on 24 with 43.2
6th Pete nurse on 19 with 41.4
After the Paul winning the match the default silver's money went to Leon Hubbard on peg 33 with 17.14.
Not a big weight match but a nice close one , so it was interesting and a working match trying to Nick odd fish to stay in the running,

All pictures courtesy of Judith rixon, pink wellies and all,