Welcome to my fishing blog… June 2023
June 18th – Bristol Avon, The Crane, Keynsham – Bream or Bust
Having endured 3 long months of stationary float-watching, I was gagging to get back out on the river. For the first river match of the new season, I was on the Crane section of the Bristol, Avon with my RBL club. Throughout the season, we run a series of matches on various river venues with each match counting for aggregate points, and we all know what points make don’t we. Well, we had 14 hardy souls turn up for this one including a new member, John Amato. John has been absent from fishing for a while and is a bit rusty but I’m sure he’ll find his fishing legs before not too long.
As usual, everyone wants to be drawn on the higher numbered pegs because that’s where the bream live…but they don’t always show up. Last year’s first match on the Crane was won with just 5lb odd of small roach so you just never know. Right then… into the draw bag goes the hand of fate, and out comes peg 11. Luvverrly I thought. I’ve drawn in the small ash tip field and could be in with a shout if the bream feed. On peg 12 is Jason who knows how to catch bream and knows only too well that he’s on what is probably the best bream peg… ever!
After handballing everyone’s kit over the fence… (phew! I need to bring less kit), I made it to my peg and after a quick eyeball of my swim, my plan was simply to fish as I would normally fish this peg. So, out comes a 12-foot feeder rod and a 13-foot stick float rod. Initially, I set up my feeder rod with a large 30gm open-end feeder so I could get some feed into the swim. On my stick float rod I set up a 9BB Crowquill Avon float. I prefer this to a waggler as I feel I have more control, especially if a breeze picks up, which it usually does.
On the all-in, I put out 6 feeder loads of Sensas 3000 black groundbait laced with caster and chopped worm. I left this to settle for 45 minutes, while I went out on the float line fishing single and double red maggle at 8 feet deep. Usually, I would get a few roach in quick succession but for 20 minutes I didn’t have a bite. I started putting more loose feed in and finally, I caught a small chub about 6 ounces. I carried on feeding and running my bait through on the same line but only managed another small chub.
Now, this didn’t feel right… like… where have all the roach gone? I’m usually trying to heave them out to avoid pike attacks here but not today. Well, it was time to try the feeder line. I put on a smaller groundbait feeder, baited up with worm and caster, and lobbed it out about two-thirds the way across. About 10 minutes later… nothing, so I reeled in, baited up with 3 red maggots, and went out again. We had now been fishing for an hour and all I had was 2 small chub so I needed something to happen. Then it did… the tip of my rod bent round, I struck and could feel the bump… bump of a big bream… and then…
Oh No!!! It came off. Undeterred, I baited up and went straight out again. I started getting some ‘tap-tap’ bites from small roach so I changed back to fishing worm and caster. I persevered for an hour on this and was about to give up when my phone rang. It was Jason on the next peg. He tells me he’s got 2 bream so it looked like I would need to keep at it for a bit longer. However, all I could get was annoying twitches from small fish. Well, I continued for another half hour before going back out onto the float. It was still hard but I did manage to find 6 roach at 10 feet deep and another one at 3 feet deep.
Next, Jason appears behind me like some mysterious phantom… “Hey Bill, have you got any spare keepnets?” He asks. He had just caught 5 bream in a row and was concerned about their welfare. The best I could offer him was a piece of rope, which he could use to tie to his keepnet so that it could be lowered deeper into the water. Well, after that I just had to concentrate on catching bream but I didn’t get any more signs of a bream during the rest of the match. With the match over, Jason had won with about 8 or 9 bream for 34lbs. Ian ‘Swanny’ Swanborough was drawn on the end peg and also found some bream, finishing up a close second with 31lbs. Well done to those 2 guys.
Billy no bream, ended up with just 1lb 9oz of small roach and chublets, finishing halfway down the table. Amazingly, I still picked up 7 points from 14 so not a complete disaster and there’s still a long way to go yet. It was strange that there were very few roach about. I can usually bag 5-10lbs from this swim on the Crowquill. And, I don’t have a clue about what was happening with the bream today. I did expect to catch a few from this peg as in previous pleasure sessions, I have had nets of 60lbs of bream from here. S*it happens I guess. Thinking back, the one I lost was probably foul-hooked because the rod tip went round quite slowly. Anyway, that’s all ancient history now. My next match is on the Lido with the Alcove guys… keep you posted.
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About me
January 2023
February 2023
March 2023
April 2023
May 2023
June 2023
11th – Margaret’s Lake, Whitehouse Farm
18th – River Avon, Crane, Keynsham
25th – The Lido, Fishponds, Bristol
28th – Fish-O Qualifier, Todber Manor
July 2023
August 2023
September 2023
October 2023
November 2023
December 2023
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June 2022
July 2022
August 2022
September 2022
October 2022
November 2022
December 2022
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