After my travels to Cornwall the arrival of June 16th heralded a nice short journey to the Bristol Avon. I was up early on the 16th and set myself up on a peg at Chequers that was opposite the weedbed on Frys. It was a bit tricky setting up in the darkness but as the daylight arrived I was pleased to see I had not missed out any rings on the rod when threading the line! It was a pretty straight forward approach, I set up a crowquill and a groundbait feeder and was going to fish bread. The fishing was steady and no small fish showed at all, I finished with 9 skimmers, 1 bream and 3 hybrids for 20lb. I lost a few that were foul hooked and I reckon that some of the fish were cleaning off in the weedbed and not feeding. A couple of my mates also fished, Martyn Wooding had 28lb of bream off the barge peg, and Andy Floyd had 22lb on the top of the straight. The one thing in common about all our pegs was that we were fishing in the shallow water.
On the 18th June I travelled with Bob Sheppard to Tockenham Reservoir. We went very early to try to get on the best pegs, but as we arrived in the car park two carp anglers were walking off to the pegs. Luckily we still got on the pegs on the point and were dead happy. I set up the pole to fish at 10 metres with 1 rig a 4x16 with an 18 to 0.10 smart. Bob was ready before me and starting throwing in groundbait around his float, before he had finished his elastic was out! I followed suit with the groundbait and although I didn't have a flying start I was soon into fish. If I put caster on the hook I would catch a roach, if I put red maggot on a skimmer would oblige. I also caught 3 tench and lost 6 lumps which smashed me up. During the day Mike Kent turned up and we let him fish on the peg in between Bob and myself, Mike didn't have a pole but by throwing gbait at a waggler he also caught plenty. My final tally was 44lb, whilst Bob had 60lb.
On Saturday my team had a practice on the river Axe for a future Superleague round. I was tasked to fish for eels but after 2 hours all I had managed was to lose two eels one of which was near 2lb. I then had a go on a wag feeding maggot, and after another 2 hours still had nothing! However, a couple of lads had tried fishing with brown crumb and had a few roach and so I mixed some crumb up and started throwing it at the wag. I couldn't believe it, I started to get bites and ended with 2lb 2oz of roach. It was clear the roach needed a cloud to make them feed.
I fished two matches on the Avon next but caught nowt but eels, so nothing more to say about that! I was back practising again on the Axe again and this time fishing gbait and waggler with a single maggot on a 20 to 0.10 I had 6lb of small roach and skimmers, and we all caught well.
On July 5th it was to time to see if our practicing on the Axe would pay off in the Drennan Superleague. I drew above Lympsham bridge and this area had not been to good recently, also I recognised the water level was well up. I set up a Paul Lumbard hand made waggler with 3 no8 and 1 no10 down the line and went with a 22 to 0.08. I fed a ball of brown crumb every single cast and caught on single white maggot (and later double squatt) fishing between 6ft and 10ft deep. At one stage Robbie Greenham (a Bathampton runner) came up to me and said "What are your lot doing, you are all catching loads!". I ended up with a lowly 4lb 1oz but that won the section beating Kev Dicks by a few ounces. Back at the results it was amazing as we had all done well, and we won the day with 93 out of a possible 104 points. It was quite funny when the organiser read out all the section winners and was continually shaking his head in disbelief as the same team name came out. It was a day never to forget as it is not very often that just one team gets on the winning method.
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