A Nice Match For A Nice Guy
Just spent an enjoyable weekend on the Avon at Evesham. It was the Dean Hancox Memorial on Sunday, so I thought I’d make a weekend of it and fish the river both days. It was nice to familiarise myself again with the place as I’d not fished Evesham for quite a while.
On Saturday I drew peg 24, which is one of the shallow swims downstream of the main bridge. It was extra clear and weedy and no more than 4.5ft anywhere, but there’s always a bit of pace on these pegs. I just fed an 8m swim, past most of the weed, with maggots, worms and casters and a 13m swim with hemp.
Surprisingly, the hemp swim only yielded 10 small roach. Not sure having rowers repeatedly stopping in front of me helped matters, plus their speed boat breaking down… My closer swim was best and yielded some chunky perch, but it was also alive with tiny fish, which were a bit of a pest. Thought I was back on the Upper Thames!
I’ve fished a very average match and put 3lb 9oz on the scales. Only needed another 1lb to win the section, though. Well done Dave Kirk winning the match with just over 7lb from peg 35.
The match I really wanted to win was the next day. There was a decent turnout in the morning, all paying respects to Dean Hancox. A truly great guy, sadly gone far too soon. It was nice to see his widow Melanie there and we all had a memorial wrist ribbon, which was a lovely touch.
I’ve drawn just two swims further downstream on peg 26. Again I needed to do some weed trimming and with a few whippy reeds right out to 11 metres I expected to be snagged up a few times.
The wind was even stronger today so I decided to discount the seed and just target perch and any other species that might take a worm hook bait. A quick chat to venue expert Leigh Gardner helped to make my mind up too. I fished 9m, 13m and a maggot feeder down the middle, feeding pretty heavily via catapult and baitdropper.
I’ve popped 5lb 7oz on the scales. Enough for a section prize and 7th best weight on the day. The last 40 minutes were almost biteless, however, and I also lost a good eel mid-match that potentially cost me framing.
Well done Reece Grinnell winning the match and trophy with 8lb 13oz from peg 1. Kevin Saunders was 2nd with 7lb 2oz from peg 2 and Darren Rogers was 3rd with 6lb 15oz from 29.
A great presentation afterwards, very entertainingly compered, and over £300 was raised for St Richard’s Hospice. I even won two prizes in the raffle, plus a friendly spectator had kindly brought me a Freddo, so plenty to smile about!
It was nice to be back at Evesham and even nicer to see everyone coming together to pay their respects to Dean. This will hopefully be an annual event and even bigger and better next year!
