Avalon Fishery - Heather Bush Memorial Match

 Where to start this blog this week then.... Tier 3 stays as tier 3 for South Glos, then Christmas gets shrunk to just Christmas day with others. Weather is pretty crap, lots of rain and wind river is completely wrecked and will be flooded for a while I guess. However, I will not get down, after all some people are a lot worse off than I am. Which brings me to the sad point of the passing of Lance Tucker. Lance has been known to me for many years and I always liked him, he had a great sense of humour and was a very good angler. I remember one time him being on a match at Newbridge with Des Shipp one side and Steve Mayo the other, Lance admitted to 3lb after the match, with Des and Steve admitting to 5 or 6lb. Lance weighed in 9lb to beat them both, I recall him getting berated by the pair of them and he just stood there smiling and laughing. I will miss seeing Lance on the bank, and I feel sad for his family and friends, and I'm sure his team mates are absolutely gutted. RIP Lance, it was nice that you got to win your last match.

 I got myself booked into this match as Vic is an old friend of mine now and I wanted to be able to participate and remember his wife Heather who sadly passed away earlier this year. I spent a few hours on Saturday swapping out my river gear, getting some rigs and hook tying done. I felt I was prepped for either carp or silvers and settled down to watch local lad Bill Bailey win Strictly, nice to see an over 50 win it, I'm still getting to the gym to keep fit and think I can take some inspiration from Bill.

I was up at 6am Sunday morning and on the road by 7am to get to the fishery in plenty of time for the 8:30am draw, and partake in a bacon and sausage roll which had been provided for free by I think Andy Gurd (it is tricky sometimes when everyone is wearing masks to know who is who lol). The draw was done by Vic's grandson, he pulled out the peg numbers for everyone, and he gave me peg 6. Can be OK for carp I was told, but I felt I was the wrong end of the lake with the wind blowing down to the other end. I tried to take a photo of the peg but the sun was blinding..

I set up a little Preston cage feeder today with 0.17 to 16 GPM, and a couple of pole rigs, one for fishing for silvers with 0.12 to 16 SFL, and the other 0.15 to 16 GPM, both were on 4x18 floats. That was it for me. On my right on peg 6 was an older guy called Graham, nice chap, and on my left on peg 7 another old mucker of mine Ade Crawley. The match seem to start a little before the 10am time on my phone, but hey ho, I fed 3 balls of gbait at 13m off to the left, and some micro at 13m off to the right. Then out with the gbait feeder with a piece of corn on the hook, it wasn't long before a carp was being played, but not by me. Ian Stainer on peg 9 had a 9lb carp. My first hour on the tip was unfortunately uneventful, not even a liner, Ade and Graham were also fishless on the tip. I tried my gbait pole line and took a couple of small fish here and a 6oz skimmer but that was it, the micro line was a waste of bait is all I will say. Back on to the feeder but still not a sign and I had gone from trying the deeper water to against the reeds with both unsuccessful. I decided to stick to going close to the reeds, but did catch a couple that were under water, but once I had pulled them out had not trouble.

Opposite Graham on the other side of the gap (planks of wood) were carp topping regularly but it took the guy there a couple of hours before he got one, then had three on the trot. I had changed on the feeder to maggots on the hook and there were lots of small fish by the island as I had a bite a chuck which kind of told me there were no carp there. I had a couple of small roach, missed quite a few bites and then had a decent pull round which turned out to be a 2lb skimmer and I had this with about 90 mins to go I guess, so 3lb in the net. Ade and Graham had about a pound or so. I did my best to have a chuckle and laugh with the lads either side, helped pass the time lol.

I had been feeding maggots at 6m by hand and decided to try this again and there were some roach here now, I wasn't really geared up for them but caught what I could here as the float was going under. I was hoping for a carp late on, but one never came. However, I did get another 2lb skimmer on the long pole line, but it was a one off. It had been a tough day for most in my area, except Ian it seemed, and a couple of anglers opposite had a few carp (and they were still boshing after the match).

Mark Cooke on peg 1 had 2 carp and a bream, then Graham had 3lb 2oz, my silvers went 8lb 4oz, and then Ade had 2lb 9oz. Fair to say it was a tough area I had drawn. Ian had 13lb of silvers to go with his one carp and had done well. As the scales went further (I didn't follow) there were more carp caught it seemed, and on peg 21 Jamie Cook had a nice day on the gbait feeder to win the match with 83lb. The silvers was won by Steve Kedge with just 14lb. Apparently the lake was a foot up on the previous day and the locals said they had a tremendous amount of rain and hailstones yesterday which obviously upset the fish. I ended up in 20th place, and still managed to pick up a nice prize a litre bottle of spiced rum. The prizes Vic had were great, as was the free stew, mince pies and glass of prosecco we had to toast Heather. It was then on to the raffle, which seemed to take forever as there were so many prizes! It was looking like the Mike West and Pete Neate show as they won a lot, meanwhile myself and Neil Mercer were looking at dipping out, but right near the end one of my tickets got drawn out and a £10 tackle voucher was mine yay. Neil blew out lol.

Although the fishing was tough it was lovely to be at Avalon, a great looking place in the middle of the levels. I also got to see some anglers that I had not seen for a very long time, and good to catch up with them. There's a lack of photos today as I didn't want to encroach on anglers or pass phones around.

Well that is my last post before Christmas, I do have a match after Christmas at Hillview which I am looking forward to, but I will need to draw better than today. Despite whatever life chucks at us at the moment we've got to get through it, and I hope you can celebrate Christmas the best way you can and make the most of it, smile and laugh, and think of others. Merry Christmas everyone.