Avalon, 31 May (19 pegs)

I may go off on a bit of a tangent this week as I haven't got much to write about fishing-wise after my dismal performance today.

So first up then and a short apology as it has been brought to my attention that I may have upset someone with my recent semi-drunken ramblings.

I won't go into details but to that person who I offended I do apologise if I over-stepped the mark a bit but please be assured that nothing that goes down on these pages is intended to cause bad feeling etc.

Talking of taking the piss (or banter as it is known these days) Giles Cochrane wrote an interesting passage about this on his FaceBlog thingy.
 You can read that here

Funny enough, the same person who was named and shamed in that piece was also up to his usual antics in the cafe at Shipham this morning but I can assure Mr Rixon that the Halall sausages were actually really good and I would thoroughly recommend them.

So after receiving my first dose of Sunday morning abuse (there was plenty more to come), I made it down to Avalon with about 3 minutes to spare mainly due to the chef not turning up at the cafe but it has to be said that the Lilypool Spice Girls did a great job and the breakfast was as good as it always is, just about 30 minutes longer in the making.

No travelling partner this week as Derek had gone off to London for the weekend for a "gay wedding" so next match I shall be making sure the centre armrest  in the fishing bus is well and truly fixed down and I will be hiding the Elton John cd

19 fishing today then, including the fishery owner Mr Bush who kindly organised the pegging.

And that gave us the normal left bank (1 - 23) and four pegs dotted along the back of the top Island.
In a similar fashion to last week Will was paying out 1st and 2nd overall, 2 silvers and 2 sections and we even had a golden peg to go at this week which was peg 21.

With the chilly wind blowing over the backs of most of us but forecast to swing right to left up the lake I fancied peg 23, 24 (top corners) or the right hand end of any island peg which would allow a waggler to drift into the reeds.

Getting in the queue early I got myself peg 17 which was worthy of a smug grin as it's a nice peg on a small island.

Three slight problems though ...

I was on the wrong end of the island,

There was an overhanging branch in front that was already decorated like a tackle shop Christmas tree,

And Alan Healey was on 16, which had apparently won the open on the previous Thursday with 108lbs

which you can read about here

Peg 17 and my new hi-viz nets

A very determined looking Alan Healey

Alan had unfortunately been on the receiving end of quite a lot of "banter" last week at Staunton Court after recording a massive dnw from the next peg to the winner but these things happen (even to good anglers)!

Nonetheless he was pretty determined it wasn't going to happen again this week.

On my left today, and on the good side of an island, was Keith Ray who was sporting a slightly less blinding version of the Team Frenzee look and down from Alan on peg 13 was Lee Williams who spent the first 15 minutes of the match doing an impression of an otter searching for his missing keepnet. 

Elsewhere Mark Radford and Vic Bush were on 23 & 24 which both looked likely to do well, 2-pegs Taynton had finally managed to draw away from me and was hiding round the back on 27 and Chris Szakacs had drawn the shortest walk on the lake, a flat calm peg 1, and wasn't looking overjoyed even though it had come second in the Thursday match.

That was the last I saw of Chris so I guess as fish have fins they had used them to bugger off elsewhere, as did poor Mr Szakacs.

To cut a long story short the match was won by Lee Williams who is currently on a bit of a roll and, despite swimming round his margins for 15 minutes, managed 106-13 of carp caught mostly on the wag.

And you can read all about that here

He chose not to weigh in his 3 accidental roach and that almost proved costly when we got round to Matt Taynton as after his first 2 weighs it was looking mightily close but he ended up 2nd with 102-14 also caught on the wag.

3rd place went to Vic with 66-3

Top silvers on the day went to Lee Waller with 16-6 of skimmers from peg 11

Just ahead of Steve Sewell's 16-2 from peg 28

Lee caught on worm over chopped worm and caster / groundbait at 14m

Full Result:

1. Lee Williams (13) ....... 106-13
2. Matt Taynton (27) ........ 102-14
3. Vic Bush (24) ............. 66-3 (section)
4. Keith Ray (19) ............ 55-10
5. Will Dearlove (9) ......... 48-14 (section)
6. Lionel Legge (6) .......... 36-9
7. Mark Radford (23) ....... 32-4
8. Ryan Radford (7) ......... 29-11
9. Matt Williams* (21) ..... 27-0
10. Adam Caswell (3) ........ 24-15
11. Steve Sewell (28) ........ 23-10
12. Paul Preston (5) ........... 17-7
13. Lee Waller (11) ............ 16-6
14. Alan Healey (16) .......... 13-12
15. and 5 dnw's

Silvers:

1. Lee Waller  (11) ...... 16-6
2. Steve Sewell (28) .... 16-2
3. Mark Radford (23) .... 12-12
4. Keith Ray (19) ......... 11-10
5. Paul Preston (5) ....... 11-5
6. etc

And if anyone was wondering ....

After a couple of successful practice chucks before the start my first proper chuck with the wag ended up in the tree much to Alan's amusement and my match never really improved from that point on.

My 1 carp, 2lb skimmer and handful of bits harpooned on my shallow rig would have struggled to make double figures but we'll never know as they never made it to the weigh net.

Alan didn't do much better but he weighed in for the satisfaction of getting one of his pound coins back.

Next week we're down at Trinity which suits me better as there's none of that island chucking nonsense!