Sunday 8th September – A Faint Glimmer Of Hope After My Result On The River At Staverton

I have 3 match reports this week so I’ll keep them relatively short, otherwise you’ll be nodding off about halfway through. Although it wouldn’t surprise me if you normally do that anyway. That’s why I highly recommend my blogs for a little night-time reading.

Thursday 5^th September – Windmill Fisheries

Man, what a fooking miserable wet and windy day this turned out to be and with a little thunder and lightning thrown in for good measure. 18 anglers braved this one, fooking mental, every one of them! I drew peg 17, which I had never drawn before and I didn’t like the look of it at all. It’s in a gap between 2 islands and just too open for my liking. The first thing I had to do when I got to my peg was set up my brolly so that it was tilted against the north wind. The rain was relentless and the wind was blowing it sideways up the lake… it were ‘orrible!

It was not a day for fishing paste that’s for sure, which is just as well because I had brought a kilo of worms with me today. I wanted to try out a worm/fishmeal groundbait and see if the groundbait would help draw in and keep the carp in the swim. So, I set up a rig for fishing worm at 7 metres and a rig for fishing down my left-hand edge. I couldn’t see my right-hand edge due to my brolly position so that was ruled out. I also set up a feeder rod with maggle feeder, which I was just about able to cast out from underneath my angled brolly, toward the edge of the island.

Well, that’s how I started… on the feeder. After 30 minutes all I had was a couple of liners so I gave up on that to focus entirely on my worm line. I chopped up a load of dendras, blended the worm slop with some worm groundbait and added a few micros into the mix. I then cupped out a large ball to kick-start the swim and after an hour it finally produced the first carp. I couldn’t tell if the swim was fizzing or not because my swim looked like something out of an episode of Hawaii-five-O. I was half expecting a surfer to come streaming by at any minute…lol.

Well, readers of a certain age will know what I mean. So, after I netted the first carp I then lost 4 in a row… FFS! One was defo in the tail and we tango’d for an age before he finally made off. Then I landed a couple before foul-hooking a load more. I tried coming off the bottom but that made no difference. A look down the edge with meat just brought another foul hooker and this was a biggie too, breaking my 0.15 hooklength like it was cotton. Well, it was a frustrating day all round and I was glad to pack up and go home after weighing just shy of 40lbs to come nowhere. Well done to Paul Barnfield, the serial winner, for putting on another fabulous display of worm fishing, weighing in 101lbs (I think).

Saturday 7^th September – Riverfest Qualifier – Chequers to Swineford

Myself and Legion clubmate, Jason Pitman, had bought our tickets for this event way back in June and now it was finally here. The draw was held in the Old Plough pub in Kingswood with 40 anglers in attendance, including a few match scene celebrities. They included Clive Branson, Andy Power, James Robbins and Bill Knight… well perhaps not Bill Knight…lol. We hadn’t seen the river but guessed that after all the rain we had it would be up and coloured. So, with that in mind, we would all be hoping to draw on a good bream peg. I drew B6, which was the second last peg in the little Ashtip field (2^nd Field) on the Crane. I was very happy with that! (Sorry, I forgot to take any photos).

Jason waited and took the last ticket, which turned out to be peg B15 on the cattle grid at the Crane. This peg was fished by another Legion member midweek and produced some good-sized skimmers to pole tactics. Well, the river had a lovely colour and screamed bream. With only 2 anglers qualifying, 1 from each zone of 20, it was bream or bust today, no ifs and no buts. On the all-in, I lobbed out 6 large feeders full of groundbait and dead reds to about two-thirds the way across the river. I then chucked out a 30-gram open-ended feeder with a 30” tail, size 16 hook, baited with 3 red maggles and waited… and waited…and waited.

I rebaited the feeder every 5-10 minutes and began picking up roach and gudgeon. Some of the roach were around the 8-ounce mark but just not what I was after. Two hours in and I had a call from Jason. He was admitting to catching 4 bream and some skimmers on double worm so a change to worm on the hook for me but still, there were no takers. I’ve drawn this peg before on club matches and always done well with bream but it just wasn’t happening today. I did expect peg B5 to do very well as this is often the best bream peg in this area but although he did have one proper bream, he couldn’t find any more. However, he did find some quality skimmers.

So, 3 hours gone and still no bream for me although I did have about 4lb of roach. I decided to give it another hour and then maybe think about giving up. Well, I tried everything I could think of but it was a no-bream day for sure so I packed up with just under an hour to go. Word had come down the grapevine that someone on peg B1 was having it off with about 60lbs of bream. Even if my peg came alive and they queued up in the last hour I was still never going to match that. So, it was time to throw in the towel and hope that Jason had done enough to pick up some wonga for his efforts.

Well, the results were in and peg B1 produced a 92-09-0 winning haul of big bream for Paul Johnson. Well done to him. I had told him at the start that he was in for a long walk but it would be well worth it. Local Ace Andy Power secured the other qualifying position from Swineford with 36-12-0. It was bad luck for Jason, who despite a great performance, finished third overall with 29-04-0, ahead of Welsh wizard Clive Branson who weighed 26-11-0. Well, there’s always next year!

Sunday 8^th September – Kingswood RBL Club Match- Staverton

This match should have been on the river Avon at Barton Farm but somehow our booking was overlooked in favour of an open match. So, I had to phone around and hastily rearrange, which put us on the river at Staverton. A big thank you to Kev Grant and Trowbridge Angling. Well, we would normally have had at least 10 out for this one but with holidays etc, we ended up with only 6. So, that meant we had plenty of river at our disposal and were all well-spaced out. (I’m always well-spaced out lol!)

I drew the end peg, which was permanent peg 48, and Jason drew the other end peg, permanent peg 15. Jason is my partner in the pairs competition so it was looking very favourable for us. All the pegs here are sheer bliss to look at with overhanging willows and reed beds and lilies. Kingfishers are busy on this stretch as there is an ample supply of food by way of bleak in every peg. Oh, and you can park behind your peg too. So, my dreamy-looking peg had a willow tree opposite and then a gap and then another willow tree to my left. It was a no-brainer where I was going to fish and the maggle feeder was to be the preferred weapon of choice.

As picturesque as this section of the river is, it doesn’t give up its residents easily. There are big chub in almost every peg but catching these elusive creatures is a serious challenge. We keep saying at all our club matches here that someone will nail it one day but up to now nobody has. I have had some big chub on but never managed to land one above 2lbs. There are some big pike in this stretch too and they’re not too fussy about what they will eat. I’ve had some big doubles on worm in the past.

The weather first thing in the morning was atrocious but as the day progressed it got better and better, which helped raise the spirits. I started on the maggle feeder, casting into the gap between the trees and started hitting small roach, chublets and gudgeon. I felt I needed to get tighter to the far bank, which turned out to be a mistake as I ended up in a big snag and lost a feeder. Before I put on another feeder, I had a go on the whip, fishing at 4 metres and letting the float run down the middle of the river. This brought a string of bleak before I came to my senses and went back onto the feeder.

I was getting bites regularly but only catching small fish so I needed to do something to try and spur the chub to feed. The only way I know is to feed a lot of bait. I had a Crowquill Avon float set up on my float rod and I set the depth to 5 feet, which was about half the actual depth. I decided to cast above the willow tree, which was in front of me, and fire out big pouchfuls of maggles every couple of minutes. I did this for about an hour getting through nearly 2 pints of maggles and catching small 1-2 ounce chublets plus bleak but still no sign of the big chub.

With an hour to go I went back onto the maggle feeder and caught a 4-ounce perch followed another and then another. I think the loose-fed maggles had livened up the swim a bit and drawn some better fish in. Then the tip shot round and I was into a chub. It was only about a pound and a quarter but it was the best fish of the day. It seemed the fishing had improved considerably after the heavy feeding session but alas… I ran out of time. I think maybe another hour and I would have been into some proper dog chub but I’ll never know.   

With the match over all the weights proved to be quite low, which is not unusual for this place, especially if you don’t catch enough chub. The top rod today was Kev Murch with a 4-4-0 mixed bag, followed closely by me with 3-15-0 for second. It’s not much to shout about but that’ll do nicely. It was an enjoyable day on the river with a few beer tokens added to the kitty… what’s not to like?

Well, I’ll be at Windmill again on Thursday 12^th for the penultimate round of qualifiers and another practice session for me. The final is on the following Thursday so I hope I’ve got my tactics sorted. Then on Sunday the 15^th, I’ll be there again. This will be my very last chance to qualify for the Bonanza 1000 before the final for that one. What will be will be… Keep you posted. 

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