Sunday 9^th March – Kingswood RBL Club Match – River Avon, Christian Malford

I missed a couple of matches due to a health problem affecting my better half but now that she’s on the mend, it’s business as usual. Well, business as usual means all the usual frustrations of fishing the Match Lake at Windmill Fisheries, especially last Thursday. There was a good turnout for this one, with 16 anglers fishing. I think it must have been the sunshine that stirred the enthusiasm. So, with the wind blowing down the lake, I fancied a peg around halfway on either side. I would have been happy drawing any of the pegs from 6 to 10 or 14 to 18, but it was not to be. Instead, I drew peg 2. I really hate peg 2!

The reason I hate this peg is that it can be an all-out match-winning peg as long as you can fish at 16 metres and poke your top 2 tip into the reeds on the opposite bank. That’s where the carp live, and I could see some tell-tale signs right from the start. So, I had no choice but to set up a no-nonsense pole rig especially for them. I selected a 4×16 (0.5gm) crystal dibber to 0.19 mainline. Hook choice was a 16 Guru Kaizan tied to a 0.17 hooklength. It was about 4 feet deep out there, but I set the rig to 3 feet deep to allow for pushing up the slope and against the reeds. My initial bait choice was 2 maggles on the hook with corn as a change bait. The only other line I set up at this stage was a full-depth rig for fishing 7 feet deep at 11 metres to my right-hand side.

So, on the all-in, I dropped in some chopped worm, a few maggles and some Scopex groundbait to the 11-metre line. A positive approach I know but these damn fish have to feed some time don’t they? Next, I attached my front roller and pushed my maggle-baited rig out toward the reeds. I opted for a slight gap where the ducks had been coming in and out from the island, and I waited. I had no indications during the first 10 minutes, so I rebaited the hook with a single red maggle and fired over about a dozen. As soon as I pushed the pole out again, the float disappeared and it was fish on. I managed to get this one to about halfway across before we parted company. A defo foul hooker.

So, out I went again, but it was a good 20 minutes before I locked onto another one. I managed to get this right under my top 2 before he shot off and broke me. For fook sake! That was a 0.17 hooklength! Now with about 45 minutes gone, the wind began picking up, making it increasingly difficult to hold the pole steady, even on my special front roller. Another bite just on the hour and another fish lost…so it was game over for the long pole. My other option was the heavily baited 11-metre line. So, on went a whole dendra and out we go. There were no signs for the first 10 minutes and so I potted out another mix of chopped worm, maggles and groundbait. That got the attention of a passing carp because a few minutes later, I had an indication followed by a proper Paul Daniels disappearing act.

Now, this carp must have been in training for the Olympics. On the strike, it shot straight to the surface, did a couple of somersaults and backflips and ended up entangled in the line of the angler in the next peg (sorry Steve!). It eventually got free of the line and so carp number one was finally hooked and landed after 90 minutes on the clock. It was another hour before I hooked the next one, after trying both corn and maggles, but worm seemed to do the trick. Meanwhile, the angler to my left on peg 3 is catching steadily on bomb and corn cast tight to the far bank. There wasn’t any reeds opposite him, so it was easier for him to fish this way than it would have been for me.

I potted out another helping of ‘dog’s dinner’ to the 11-metre line while I explored the margins both left and right. Nothing doing there, so back out on the worm. I had a very tentative bite and missed it and then foul hooked the next one. My last fish of 3 came at 3 o’clock, and then not a sniff during the last hour. I weighed in just 19lbs for nowhere, and so another frustrating day was chalked off my life expectancy chart. I’m still taking the medication, so I’ll be back!

Kingswood RBL Club Match

It’s always nice to get back on the river and I was looking forward to this one because we hadn’t fished at Christian Malford for several years. Sadly, it will be our last match on this stretch as the bods at Amalagamated Fisheries, in their infinite wisdom, have decided to increase the peg fees to £8. They say it’s because they are losing money. I’d wager they will lose a lot more money by increasing the peg fees. Perhaps if they reduced them, they might get more clubs booking matches on the river and then actually make some money. Okay, moving on…

So we had 10 club members on this one, half of which were in with a shout of lifting the club Champion Trophy. The Pairs Aggregate Trophy was already pretty much sewn up by myself and Jason Pitman and so there was just this one prestigious piece of plastic silverware left to fish for. The river looked in good nick if not a little pacey and clear but everyone was sure the chub would feed and quality roach would make up the backing weights. I was dreading a long walk as my back was still playing up after spending a couple of hours raking aggregate at the Alcove Angling Club’s Whitehouse Farm lakes on the Friday before. I was grateful then to pull peg 2 out of the bag.

The pegs were well spread out along the river, with peg 10 being well below the Churches. Calne AC had a match on the opposite bank and so one of our guys had to find an alternative peg. I had Leigh Wakefield on peg 1, well out of my sightline, and Tony Welsby on peg 3. My peg looked a bit stark, to be fair, as someone had cut down what was obviously once an overhanging tree on the far side, but I was still confident of catching a chub or two. This stretch of river holds a good head of chub to over 4lbs and some quality roach and perch to around 1.5lbs.

I only brought a stick float rod and 2 feeder rods with me and so my plan was to start on bomb and bread for the first 30-40 minutes and then change to the stick float if that failed to produce. Well, plumbing up, I had an average depth of around 4 feet but there were quite a few snags along the glide and so accurate casting and control were called for. Well, 40 minutes on the bomb and all I had was a few little taps from what was probably gudgeon. Next, I began firing maggles well upstream of the peg to compensate for the flow and out went the stick. After a couple of trots through the swim, I had my first bite from a tiny bleak. This was followed by a couple more bleak and then a couple of tiny roach.

I tried single, double and even triple maggle on the hook but there were still no signs of any chub. I changed to caster for a while, which brought a couple more tiny roach and then a large chub topped right opposite Tony on peg 3. I was pretty sure it rose a for a floating caster and so I continued fishing with caster for a while. Well, halfway through the match, it became clear that my approach wasn’t working and so I had to do something different. So, based on the fact that chub are quite greedy and sometimes will only respond when enticed with lots of feed, I began to ‘fill it in’. I put on a medium size Drennan Black Cap maggle feeder and lobbed it right across. I also began loose feeding well upstream as before.

So now there was a lot of bait sailing down the river, which would surely tickle the taste buds of at least one hungry chub… Right?.. Yeah? No! So with time slipping away relentlessly and no response from my hare-brained plan, I had one hour left to rectify the situation… if I could. So, I stopped all feeding and went back to the bomb rig. I baited with a half a dendra and gave that 30 minutes… nothing. I spent the final 30 minutes fishing bomb and meat only to see Tony land a chub of over 2lbs on maggles. FFS! Well that was it. Game over and I hadn’t done well at all, returning a pitiful 7 ounces for all my efforts. I was surprised to learn that favoured end peg 10 hadn’t fared too well either with Alan Maggs just breaking a pound.

On the other end peg, at peg 1, Leigh Wakefield had been quietly amassing a tidy net of chub to 4lbs for a convincing win. Leigh fished the pole and Crowquill and made no mistake in accumulating a netful of quality fish for a total of 18-15-0. Well done to him and well done to Alan, who still managed to secure the prestigious trophy with a 39 point total, just ahead of Jason Pitman who ended up 4 points behind. Myself and match secretary, Ian Brice, tied for 3^rd place on 33 points apiece.

So, no more river matches now until June but 2 canal matches to look forward to. The first one is on the Wides section of the Bridgwater and Taunton canal on April 13^th, but before that, I’ll be back at Windmill and Whitehouse Farm for more fun and frolics. Keep you posted!

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