Bill Milton Memorial Poppy Appeal Open Match

 After an absence due to covid last year the Poppy Match was back, and for a change the river was going to be flowing nicely and not coloured, that meant all methods could be needed depending on the peg you drew, with Chequers, Jack Whites, Crane, Swineford, and Newbridge and the Trees pegged. However, before the match day I had an event on the Saturday, watching Bristol Rovers from the posh seats, in one of the executive boxes. There were 20 of there, including my wife and eldest daughter, as well as my regular football mates and wives, and Bill Foord who was 90. I was the only person getting up the next day to go fishing, but Paul Benson was helping run the Poppy Match so he would also have an early start. It was going to be a challenge for sure, first cider at midday, and last about 9pm I think.

Sunday morning, the alarm woke me up and I was feeling a little woozy, or maybe a lot woozy, lol. I was extra careful loading the van, and amazingly everything was loaded, I think I am getting the hang of this now. Just one problem, could not find the ticket for the match, my wife later found it when I was fishing! Got to the draw at Frys with about 15 mins to spare and ordered a sausage bap and a cup of tea. After catching up with Benz (who'd set his alarm one hour late lol) and many of the competitors it was time for the 2 minutes silence (very well observed) and then the draw, my thoughts were get 15 or 17 at Swineford. Well peg 15 went to the first angler to draw, Kev Dicks, and then I went and drew the Crane, the end peg just up from the cattle grid. Not a peg you can win from I thought, but if I can get among the roach, and may be a skimmer or chub then 15lb might get me in the frame, but then again what do I know!

The peg is under a tree, but I could cast a crowquill underam to the middle, and a feeder across to the far bank by the tree in the water. With a bit of water on this a good peg in close, but today I had to get to the middle to find the flow. Initially I had a gbait feeder set up with 0.17 to 14 N50, and the 14BB crowquill had 0.12 to 18 N20. I couldn't see anything else being used today, it wasn't a team match so just go for it. I had team mate and Scott Tackle owner Mat Challenger above me (on a peg that recently won a Com House round with bream) and just above the boys hole was Simon Alder, and then Steve Hutchinson, wasn't sure after that, but all good river anglers.

We started at 10am and I cast 6 feeder fulls of worm and caster in sonubaits sweet skimmer and lake. I did have one cast with three red maggots on to see if there was any quick response, but not a touch. Onto the crowquill, out went 8 balls of black roach, lake and river with some hemp and caster in and I fished double maggot to start. After 30 minutes on the float I had not had a bite, erm what s going on, try the feeder again and had 1 tiny tremble, and hour gone and blanking. Whilst on the feeder I changed the terminal tackle on the float to a 20 to 0.10, and after 90 minutes I tried the float again. Simon came down for a walk, he had a 1lb+ chub his only bite, and the rest of the guys were blanking! I then finally got a bite on the float but missed it, then I had a 2oz dace to save the blank. In the next 20 minutes I had another 3 dace, 1 roach, and an 8oz chublet, so about a pound, but that was the end of the bites on the float it seemed.

Back on the feeder and I had tried various hookbaits already but this time went out with 2 worms, I had a proper bite but didn't connect, it looked like a chub bite and the bait was gone, so I shortened the hook length. Out again with two worms, and quite quickly a proper bite which I connected with, whatever it was it was big, I tried to stop it from going into any snags and I was struggling to do that but didn't backwind, then the line bust, bugger. Gutted. A couple of casts later I had a 4oz perch but that was my lot. The float was tried again whilst I rested the feeder, but to no avail and I never had another bite on the float.

The gbait feeder I had used to keep my options open on the bream / chub front, but with Mat still blanking I felt the bream were not going to feed, so I switched to a blockend feeder filled with bronze maggots and put three on the hook. I think there was just over 2 hours left when I did this and I had some quick casts to get plenty of maggots in. About 1:15pm I had a big drop back, and with a few people watching I landed a chub of just over a 1lb. Around 15 minutes later another bite, a better fish this time at around 2 1/2lb to 3lb.  With 90 minutes still left of the match I was thinking another 5 or 6 chub could  get me to my target weight, but those thoughts were "pie in the sky", I never had another bite! I was mist surprised as to how hard the peg had fished, I was sure I was going to draw fish up the river, but it just didn't happen. As it turned out my 5 pegs were really poor, with Simon having the 1 chub for 1lb 6oz, the rest blanked, my fish went 6lb so I would at least get the £30 section money.

Back to the Frys club for the results and banter, and what I began to hear was quite unbelievable, that there had been a catch of 40+ bream from the trees, and as it turned out it was quite true. As you can see by the top 8 weights overall. Chris "Gappy" Parr (no longer gappy) had the day of his life catching bream for 4 hours. He told me that halfway through he walked down to the next peg to see his mate Tony Goodland, and asked him if he had a spare keepnet. Tony said why do you need one, Chris responded "I've got 24 bream already and why are you not fishing for them dopey!" Well Chris chucked the feeder out and found the bream were also in his peg, and caught 90lb in two hours! Derek Coles was a few pegs away from these guys and also had bream. Well done to those three, especially Chris on becoming Poppy Champion with a monster weight, might even be a river 5 hour record. How wrong was I in my thoughts of how the river would fish and what weight would be needed to frame. 

The top three bream baggers! All top blokes too so couldn't be happier for them.

Bream and chub made up the rest of the frame weights bar Paul Purchase who had 26lb of roach and two pike (which count) in his net. Paul was up in the long ashtip and this is where the roach were shoaled up as other anglers had them in this field. In fact the crane fished pretty well apart from where I was lol, Craig Fletcher was in the bay and had chub, and my team mate Kev Bennett on the high wall had 15lb of chub, including an absolutely huge chub that weighed 7lb 12oz! That he landed on 0.09 and a 20 hook!!!! Amazing.

This match truly was an outstanding event, with weights coming from all sections apart from Chequers which was dire again. Yes the fish have shoaled up, so it's a bit of feat or famine, but that's fishing and if you were lucky enough to draw on some fish then good luck to you. As ever Ray Bazeley, Paul Benson and Colin Ellaway ran the match superbly, and we had plenty of laughs thanks to Ray's patter. A lot of money was raised for the Poppy Appeal, I believe over £2,000 so that's the icing on the cake really. I feel honoured to have been part of this match over many years, and today was just another special match on what is a special river, well done to all who fished and helped out. I was well hapy when I got home and saw this, it was good to refuel up after a long day out. (That's orange squash in the glass by the way, lol)