Sunday 16^th June – Kingswood RBL Club Match – Bristol Avon, Keynsham – Plus Some Hot Air At Windmill

Before the BIG day on the river, I had another go at Windmill Fisheries. Regular readers will be aware that I’ve qualified for the final of the Windmill Costcutter 500, so I’m just using these Thursday matches for practicing now. However, I haven’t yet qualified for the Bonanza 1000 final and maybe I never will. Read on to find out why…

Thursday 13^th June – Windmill Costcutter Qualifier (Controversy)

There were 21 names on the list originally, but only 17 showed up on the day, which turned out to be dry, warm and sunny for a change. Today, I wasn’t planning on targeting the silvers or the carp especially. I just wanted to try a few things and see if they worked. If they did then fine and if they didn’t then there would be nothing lost and another lesson learned. So, into the drawbag of ‘fairy tales and nightmares’ I go and out comes… peg1. FFS! Not again! I drew this peg 10 days ago and 10 days before that! I’ve had some pretty good days and some fooking horror stories on this peg so I didn’t know what to expect today. Oh… and I was on the scales again.

Well, I got to the peg and had a good look around. I couldn’t see anything moving in the reeds to my right or to the left. I couldn’t see any cruisers or toppers either but there were a few signs right over against the island, so a feeder rod was quickly set up. I also set up a slapping rig for down the right-hand side and out in open water. I have lost so many rigs fishing at full depth on the right-hand margin so I was going to give that a miss today. Instead, I set up a full-depth rig for my left-hand side. The only other rig I set up was a top two plus two, for fishing out in front. It was going to be a simple day for me come what may.

On my bait tray I had maggles, worms, 6mm and 8mm pellets plus paste. So what was I trying out today? Paste… but not any old paste. By that I mean it wasn’t a regular paste mix or a groundbait, it was something else. Something special! I really want to tell you what it is but I’ve sworn myself to secrecy (lol) to protect my chances of qualifying for the Bonanza 1000 final. If I qualify, then I’ll reveal all… I promise! Okay, so on the all-in I started slapping an 8mm pellet to my right-hand side, as close to the reeds as I dare. It was a good 15 minutes before I finally had a take from a small 3-pound carp.

I carried on for another 20 minutes or so but there didn’t seem to be any more fish about. However, in the far reed bed, on peg 25, it was full of them. I could see them just under the surface, which is exactly how it was the last time I drew this peg. Andy Gard had drawn this peg today and although he did hook and land a couple of carp from his left-hand margin, he lost a shed load too and finally gave up to concentrate on the silvers. That turned out to be a good decision for him as he ended up with the top silvers prize. So, I had given up on slapping down the edge or anywhere else for that matter.

My next focus was on my left-hand margin. I had seen the reeds moving around and so I cupped in a small amount of micros and a few 8mm pellets. As I gently lowered my rig over the top of the feed I foul-hooked one and lost it after a few minutes. I carried on feeding and trying this line with pellets, worm and maggles but I think there was only that one fish in residence, which by now was probably down the bottom end of the lake. So, I gave up on that line. I didn’t want to waste too much time today. If there didn’t seem to be any fish in the swim then it was promptly onto something else.

With about 90 minutes gone and with only one fish in the net, despondency was slowly setting in. However, not much was being caught anywhere else as far as I could see, so there was still hope and plenty of time left. My next move was to put a maggle feeder out as close to the island as possible without getting snagged up. It’s funny how I can cast a feeder to within inches of the island but when I’m putting a rig out on a 16-metre pole, I almost always get caught up in the bankside vegetation. Anyway, after a couple of casts, the tip shot round and a fish was on.

This one was about 6lbs, which cheered me up a little. A couple more casts later and I was in again only to lose this bigger fish that broke my 0.17 hooklength… For fooks sake! It was definitely a good size double, which spurred me to keep going with the maggle feeder. I began getting a lot of liners and so there were obviously quite a few fish in the swim now. My tactic was to simply hold onto my rod and wait for the tip to go round. I had 2 more on this method before it went a bit quiet. Now here’s where it gets a bit murky…

During a quiet spell on the feeder, I cupped out some micros to my right-hand margin at around 3 metres. I thought this might entice some of the carp from the reeds to move a little closer to me before I put my final paste rig to the test. And yes, I cupped out while fishing a feeder rod, in full view of Kev Winstone, Andy Gard and someone who was watching from the far bank. I didn’t know who this person was at the time but I found out later. (Keep going…)

With nothing else coming to the feeder, it was time for my ‘pièce de résistance’ (main event). I reeled in my feeder rod!… and then I cupped out some micros and maggles on the top kit plus 2 line. The carp definitely have a liking for maggles in this lake, so I didn’t see any reason why not to include them in my feed. Then I cupped out some sloppy paste. I gave it 10 minutes to settle (while I had a cup of tea). Next, I baited a size 14 hook with a firm ball of paste and lowered it into the swim. Bang! An instantaneous bite and a fish on right away!

It then became a case of one fish landed and one fish lost (that’s the next thing I need to work on). I felt as though the fish were really piling in but time simply ran out. In hindsight, I should have probably started paste fishing an hour earlier. So I finished up in 3^rd place with 62lb and won the section. Local Angling Legend, Tony Rixon, won the match with 67lb 8oz and Kev Winstone was second with 63lb 6oz.

Now then… Remember I mentioned that I cupped in some feed to my right-hand margin while feeder fishing? Well apparently it is not allowed at this fishery and if anyone had complained then I would have been disqualified. WTF! If it’s not allowed then shouldn’t it say so on the Fishery’s website? Well, it doesn’t… see for yourself. https://windmillleisure.co.uk/activities/rules-regulations/

If it’s not allowed then why isn’t it stipulated on the fishery notice board? It isn’t. The Fishery Manager/Match Organiser told me that someone had seen me doing the nasty business and told him. (Hmmm… Chinese whispers!) He also said that it was common knowledge that cupping in while fishing a rod is not allowed on any commercial fishery, which just isn’t true. For example, Packington Fisheries, Decoy Lakes, Hallcroft Fishery, Lindholme Lakes and many others including many club lakes DO allow this practice. See my letter to the Fishery Manager here: https://billysblog.co.uk/windmill-match-rules/

The fishery doesn’t say what other unwritten rules are in force on the venue so how the fook is anyone supposed to know what all the rules are? I think it’s only fair on all competitors to know exactly what they can and cannot do during a match, especially with some Windmill big money match finals coming up later in the year. I for one, would NEVER intentionally break a fishery match rule and anyone who knows me would back me up on that. I value my reputation too much.

So what do YOU think? Based on what you have learned here, should I have been disqualified? Could the management really justify such action despite no mention of this rule on their list of ‘Rules and Regulations’? Let me know your thoughts in the comments on the FishWag FB page please…

I should add that I really don’t want to kick up a big fuss over this issue, as I like fishing at Windmill but there’s still been no response from the management to my letter.

Sunday The Glorious 16^th June – Moving Water!

Moving on to calmer waters… Today was the first of my Kingswood RBL club matches and it was on the glorious Bristol Avon at Keynsham. There was a steady pace on the river and it had a nice tinge of colour. I was pretty sure that Bream would dominate the weights today and I wasn’t wrong. There was always the chance of hooking into one of the big fat chub that live here too… although many of them are quite happy to stay safely under the boats on the far side, where they get 2-3 meals every day, courtesy of the boat people.

Well, the best bream pegs on this stretch are toward the end of the second field and so that’s where I and others wanted to draw. I had put my virtual money on pegs 8, 9 and 10 delivering the goods but I drew peg 5, right in the middle. However, at this time of year, a stray bream could be caught from anywhere as they move upstream from their spawning ground in the Marina. I think the more simple you can make your river fishing the better, so I opted for one feeder rod with a 25-gram open-end feeder to fish two-thirds the way across. Also, one waggler rod with a 6BB crystal waggler, one stick float rod with a 9BB Crowquill Avon float and a topkit plus 2 for fishing close in.

On the all-in, I pumped out 8 big feeders full of black river groundbait laced with dead red maggles. I then spent the next 90 minutes fishing a 25-gram open ended feeder over the top. My bait choice was 3 red maggles to a size 16 hook tied to a 0.13 hooklength. Well, 90 minutes came and went and all I had to show was 2 small perch and a single small roach. Not good! So, I pumped out another 4 feeder loads of groundbait and then picked up the waggler rod. After a couple of casts on that, I gave up due to the strong upstream wind and the fast pace of the river. I just couldn’t get the presentation right. The Crowquill rig was next to come into play.

I was easily able to swing out the 11-foot deep Crowquill rig to well past the middle of the river and control it as it glided downstream. A big pouchful of live maggles went in a long way upstream at every second cast. I gave that an hour in the hope of enticing a big chub but it only produced 3 small chublets and a roach. I changed the bait to bread and gave it another 20 minutes but nothing on that. Despite the lack of fish, I was still enjoying the day. It’s just magical to watch a float meandering downstream while you are waiting for a bite, and never knowing what you might catch. Well, it was time to slow things down a bit and try the inside line.

I had this rig set up at 6 feet deep, which was about a foot off the bottom. I had a 0.5 gram Chianti style float on the rig, 0.15 mainline and a size 18 hook to a 0.11 hooklength. A single red maggle was the offering. I began by throwing out about 10 maggles at every run-through and it wasn’t long before I started catching… roach, chublets, perch and bleak. I would catch 3 or 4 in a row and then nothing for 5 or 10 minutes, which made me wonder whether there was a pike lurking nearby. After an hour, I decided to have another look over the groundbait in the hope a bream had stopped by for lunch but there was nothing at all there.

Well, it was now obvious that I was getting nowhere on this peg and neither was Leigh Wakefield on the next peg. I spent the last hour scratching around but couldn’t get a bite no matter what I did. All in all, it was a bit disappointing but the weather was great and I really enjoyed being back on the river. I finished up with just 2lb 11oz of bits. As predicted, the better weights came from the higher peg numbers with Ian Swanborough on peg 10 coming out on top with 3 bream and bits for a total of 15lb 8oz. Alan Maggs on Peg 8 also had a bream plus roach taking second place with 8lb 14oz and third was Kev Murch with 7lb 10oz, which also included a bream.

I’m sure the fishing will quickly improve on this stretch as more bait goes in. After all, these fish haven’t seen a maggle for about 6 months what with the floods and then the close season. My next river match will be at Staverton in July, where you can park behind your peg. However, I’m undecided about where my next lake match will be… The Bristol Lido with the Alcove club or back to Windmill? Hmmm… keep you posted…

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