A few weeks ago I had noted on Facebook that Ben Rendall was running a pairs match at Chequers, I didn't really fancy it as Chequers hasn't been great of late, I personally believe the shoals of dace and roach migrate down to Conham. However, after the Poppy match last week I found out that the match had been changed to Swineford and Crane, great news, but I couldn't find a partner as they had all been taken it seemed. Craig Fletcher (who now lives in Salisbury) was keen to fish with me, but then realised a couple of days later he couldn't. Then Ben found me a partner, but the next thing I knew I was partnered with Jerry Pocock who lives less than a mile from me. Jerry's original partner Kev Boltz decided to go sea fishing.
The deal was one angler would be at Swineford and their partner at Crane. I saw the pegging Saturday evening and sent a message to Jer asking if he wanted to fish Crane as there were some very long walks at Swineford, he agreed. I went to bed dreaming of drawing Bitton Brook and catching 40lb of chub on a waggler. I woke up the next day in good time and grabbed a Maccy D's before driving to the Crane for the draw at 8am. As I drove along Keynsham Road I got a call from Ben, the draw had been done as everyone else was there, and Jer had drawn me peg 1 which was on the outfall. Oh that wasn't on my choice of pegs I thought or something similar, used to be a brill peg but not consistent these days. I turned around and headed for Swineford.
Unloading my gear I got the usual abuse from Dean Harvey on the flyers I draw and how I moan about them. I must say Dean was looking very healthy, he told me he had been to Centre Parcs the week before, he said he had been swimming most days, but I think he was really having spa treatments as his skin was glowing. I loaded the gear on the trolley and walked to the river with the legend Jeff Surmon, it was cold with a frost on the grass. Jeff was on the next peg (blimey we draw next peg a lot) where last week on the Poppy fellow Gashead John Smith had a brilliant 38lb, I thought he would be hard to beat today.
The outfall peg has a large pipe that brings the treated effluent into the river from Saltford sewage treatment works, over the years it has produced big bags of bream as well as small fish. My plan today was around bream and chub, so a gbait feeder with 14 N50 to 0.15 Powerline, and a 5g bolo float with 16 to 0.13. I mixed up Sonubaits sweet skimmer and brown crumb for the feeder, I know fishmeal is used a lot here, but I thought it's going cold and give them something different. I started on the feeder with red maggots on the hook, I didn't chuck in any bait, just had casts of about 5 minutes each to build it steadily and see what was happening. No bites confirmed my suspicion of no small fish feeding, and so I was sure my approach was the right one. I was casting the feeder towards the tree in the picture, but not right up against it. After about 15 minutes the 28g feeder finally got dislodged on bite, I missed it, Next cast another bite and I landed a 10oz chub. About 25 mins in and I had 2 1/2lb skimmer which was a welcome sign. A couple more casts with no signs and I changed the hook bait to triple caster, this was a good move as a decent bite brought heavy resistance as a bream kited across the river in the flow, a nice 4lb+ fish. Next cast another bite, but I am sure it was a liner as the casters were not touched, and the very next cast a 5lb bream netted. Next cast another dropback but this time after a few turns a bream came off, bugger... I then had casts then without a bite and was thinking with the river being so clear I had spooked the shoal off already. Luckily the bream came back to me, and I had another 4 or 5 bream this time all on red maggots. 30lb in the net after 1hour 30 mins....
I was thinking this was going to be my chance to get a ton on the river, but that was a false dawn as I then went two hours without an indication! The float never produced a bite, but to be fair I never ran it down the peg lots as I just used it to rest the feeder. Andy Britt had been up for a walk and told me that other than me 5lb was best at Swineford and it was fishing terrible. I plugged away with the feeder and kept trying different baits, I had to switch to a heavier feeder due to the river getting faster and lots of leaves on the river which had been blown in by the cold Northerly wind. I actually lost two complete set ups today on a terrible snag just downstream, so a heavier feeder was important. I changed to a lobworm hookbait and out of the blue I had a bite and missed that, but next cast I had a really good bite, it was a 3lb chub. Next cast I had another bite but it was a bream again. No more bites on lobworm, so tried dendras, casters, maggots, and eventually had a 1 1/2lb perch on 3 maggots. I took another 2 chub about 2lb each on the feeder, but had nothing else in the last 30 minutes.
I wandered down to see Jeff who I thought may have had some bream (they may have dropped down to him), but he had really struggled with just the 1 perch, he asked me what I had and I said I thought I had 40lb. We had to wait for the scales to come down from the gas pipe, Ryan Couch had the pleasure of weighing us all in, but it was easier than normal as Swineford was rock hard, 8lb by Mat Challenger was best before I weighed in. My fish had 3 weighs, and totaled 44lb 10oz, so for once I was quite close with my estimation.
The results were back at the Crown pub in Keynsham, my partner Jerry had been chip shop sausage, with 17lb of roach either side, but his near 9lb of roach was 5th at the Crane, so we had 20 points together, but it wasn't enough to win. Ben was paying out two pairs overall so I was biting my finger nails...
Top Pair - Mat Challenger and Rob Manns with 23 out of 24 points. Great performance lads!
Second - myself and Jerry 20 points.
Third - Derek Coles and Dean Harvey also 20 points, but lost out on weight. I didn't gloat.
Great crack back in the pub, Dean picked up the section money by double default and he beat his mate Shaun Townsend off the next peg and took the 50p bet. Shaun said he ran his float through the peg hundreds of time to get his 1 chub, I said I reckon a Robin could have perched on his float it was above water so long.
I have drawn the outfall peg before over my many years of fishing the river, but third was my best off it, so today was nice to get that result off the peg. All the fish were in really good condition too.
Here's the weigh sheets below, well done to Rob Manns and Rich Lacey who both had 17lb of roach at the Crane, but as you can see winter does seem to be having an affect on the fishing at present. Oh yes, Bitton Brook where I really wanted to draw, Steve Cox had 1 roach off it and the pegs below him either blanked or had 1 fish. Well for once I was glad my dream did not come true lol!
Very good mate lol
ReplyDelete