Welcome to my fishing blog… February 2023
February 19th – River Avon, Crane, Keynsham – The Moody River
During the week, I was quite looking forward to this one as I haven’t fished the Avon since last October. However, after a chat with Tony at Premier Angling, a few doubts started to creep in. Tony mentioned that pleasure anglers were not catching but the pikers were. With that, I took a walk down to the river for a look, as you do. It looked a bit clear and there was nothing moving about. No small fish topping, no little swirls, no signs whatsoever. So my verdict was… the river looked “moody”, which can only mean one thing… it’s going to be hard.
I was running the show today as our secretary and treasurer were unable to attend. There were a few away on holiday and a few absent for various other reasons too, so there were only 9 Legionnaires in attendance. We had plenty of room and so Jason pegged out with some generous spacing, putting just 5 in the first field and 4 in the second field. As usual, everyone wanted a high number draw as that’s where the bream live… usually, occasionally, allegedly.
Into the draw bag went my untrustworthy draw hand and out comes peg 6… again. Well, peg 6 today is the first peg in the second field. Not a bream peg and not a chub peg but a great roach peg. With a tree to my right and plenty of overhanging branches, I would be able to fish the pole and get right under the branches to locate any quality roach. I also set up a 9BB Crowquill Avon float rig for trotting down the middle and a feeder rod setup for fishing out towards the boats on the far side. There are certainly worse pegs on this stretch, so I was relatively happy with my lot.
Alan Maggs was on the end peg as usual and if any bream were going to show, it would most likely be on that one. However, I thought there might not be enough colour in the water to get the bream excited, so in reality, this match was wide open. On the all-in, I lobbed out a groundbait feeder about three-quarters the way across the river with 2 maggles on the hook. The plan was to give that 30 minutes, changing to maggle feeder if it didn’t produce any bites. All the time I was fishing the feeder, I was also loose-feeding maggles under the tree to my right and firing maggles and casters out towards the middle for my trotting line.
Well, an hour had gone by and I didn’t get any indications whatsoever on the feeder, which was a bit worrying. I would have at least expected a few taps but there was no sign of life… well not as we know it. So, plan B was to fish the pole under the tree. I had 8 feet of water here at just 8 metres, which is fine but the problem was, the flow was going the wrong way. It was backing up, which meant my rig was moving from right to left, while the main flow was going the opposite way. I wasn’t happy with this but I persevered for 30 minutes without a bite.
It was now time for plan C. I had set my float rig to a depth of 10 feet although the full depth of the swim was more like 12 feet. I often do this on the Crane stretch and the roach will usually come up off the bottom, obligingly. Well, not today. With 2 hours gone, myself and the 3 anglers to my left had not had a bite so something was seriously wrong. Leigh, who was 2 pegs to my left got up and went walkabouts. He walked right down to peg 1 to see what was happening. Meanwhile, I had given up on the float rig for now and changed my feeder rig to a straight lead.
First I tried fishing bomb and bread down the middle and right across. There were no takers on that so I changed to worm and bomb and cast just shy of the middle. Within 5 minutes I had a bite, struck and latched onto something quite feisty. It turned out to be a big perch of around 2 pounds. Phew! I breathed a long sigh of relief. Leigh came back and asked if I had caught anything yet. I told him I had a small perch… well come on… it was quite small in the great scheme of things… 🙂
Anyway, he tells me that Ian Swanborough on peg 5 has had 2 chub and that Kev Murch on peg 1 had caught some skimmers. Nobody else was catching so there was still a chance and everything to go for at this stage. I persevered on the worm, trying all over from the inside to the far side. The wind had picked up considerably and although I spent another 20 minutes on the float, it proved useless. I couldn’t feed the area I wanted to because the wind was blowing the loose feed back towards me.
So, for the final hour, I had resigned myself to fishing the bomb with a worm down the middle. Tony Humphries was in peg 7 and hadn’t had a bite all day. He came over for a chat and at some point during our conversation I had a bite but missed it. In my mind, I was shouting, “For fecks sake! Concentrate you plonker!” I baited up again and cast out to the same area. Within 10 minutes I had another bite and I didn’t miss this one. It was another hefty perch of around the same size as the first one.
Now with just 20 minutes left, I baited up again with the juiciest worm I could find. I hoped, prayed and begged the river gods to grant me another big stripey but alas… it just wasn’t to be. Well, I thought I had about 4lbs with the 2 fish in my net and if everyone else still struggled through the second half of the match then I could possibly make the frame. I wasn’t counting my chickens though. As I looked up the field I could see both Alan and Leigh were weighing in, although I couldn’t see what.
When they got down to me, it was revealed that Alan eventually got one bite and caught one chub of 3lb 7oz. Lucky Leigh had almost thrown in the towel and was packing up when his maggle feeder rod bent over and he had a 2lb plus chub. With less than half an hour to go, he caught 2 more giving him over 6lbs in total. My 2 perch went 4lb 4oz. So, on to peg 5 and Ian had done really well, once again and for the second week running, catching some quality chub on the waggler with maggle for a total weight of over 14lbs. I was still in third place at this point and virtually had my mucky hand on a crisp twenty…
That’s until we got to Kev on peg 1. Kev had some decent skimmers, which pulled the dial round to 4lb 14oz, leaving me mortally wounded and with my pride in tatters. How could you Kev? After all the nice things I have said about you too. Well, it was a very strange day. Only 2 or 3 roach had been caught over the length of 9 pegs. No proper bream showing and instead, we had chub and perch making up the weights today. Peg 5 doesn’t usually throw up any chub but for some reason, they were in residence today.
At least some valuable points and combined pairs weights have moved us all along a bit and closer to the finals, which will be held on the Chequers stretch on March 12th. However, my next match will be on Margaret’s Lake at Whitehouse Farm next week. It’s the 5th round of the Winter League and I’m currently fighting for third place… watch this space.
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January 2023
February 2023
12th – River Tone – Taunton
19th – Rive Avon – Crane, Keynsham
26th – Margarets Lake – Earthcott Green
March 2023
April 2023
May 2023
June 2023
July 2023
August 2023
September 2023
October 2023
November 2023
December 2023
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