There are not many 100 pegger matches these days, but this match comes close, I think 98 tickets were sold and all the money goes to the Poppy fund. It’s a match that I and many others look forward to.
I was closely watching the river level during the week, after heavy rain it was well up on Wednesday, but slowly dropped down from there. It looked like I would need to take the kitchen sink, with pegs at Chequers, Jack Whites, Crane, Swineford and Newbridge. I was thinking a draw at Newbridge might be the best bet.
I got to the draw at Fry’s in good time, dropped off a bag of goodies to go in the raffle, paid my pools and ordered some grub. After the 2 minutes silence and the draw I was still waiting for my food, eventually I got it. My peg number was 2, and the put me on permanent peg 5 at Newbridge. Got to be honest it’s in the little field and not the best one there in my opinion. I’ve won matches on peg 3 and 7, but 5 never. Peg 3 is one of my favourite pegs on the river, and on that peg was last years winner Chris Gappy Parr. I knew I would be up against it.
As it turned out the peg below me was not drawn, and on peg 4 was my old mate Shane Caswell. I was surprised how much colour was still in the river, although the pace was lovely. It was looking like a feeder match I thought, and as no team points needed I could go for it. I set up a groundbait feeder, with 14 n50 to 0.15 powerline. Also a crowquill for fishing closer in with 18 to 0.11.
We started at 10:00 and I put 15 big balls of gbait with lots of casters and worms in down the middle of the river. Straight in over this with the feeder whilst feeding maggots closer in. It didn’t take long to start to get a few rattles on the tip, a chub of 6oz was my first fish. I had another chublet and a roach all on maggot and caster and then tried worms to look for a bigger fish. However, this didn’t bring better fish just plenty of bites from small perch, not the best sign when after bream.
I did try the float but the river was unreal, the float was being dragged at an angle downstream. It was like the top of the river was flowing much faster than the bottom. I wasn’t surprised that I didn’t have a bite. Back on the feeder and it was still small fish bites even on lobworm, but I did manage to get a skimmer about 1 1/2lb which came on dendra plus two bronze maggots. About halfway through I went for a walk to see Chris, he was a few pounds ahead of me, catching chublets and roach close in, his feeder line was dead.
Back to my peg and second cast had a real pull round and lifted into a better fish, turned out to be a chub around 1 1/2lb. Sadly no more followed. With 90 minutes left I had another try on the float to rest the feeder, now the float was going through fine and bang I had a roach. A few more runs down and another, and another. I then had another call from Shane who told me he had just lost a 10lb pike (which count) and was gutted. I cheered him up when I caught another four roach in as many casts whilst chatting lol. The roach then did one.
Back on the feeder and it was now all quiet, time for bream to turn up I hoped.. nope. Took some more roach on the float and another roach on the feeder to end the match. Decent day, just no bream in the net.
Weighed in Chris who had 12lb 15oz, lots of chublets in close. My turn next and my fish went 10lb 4oz, nice to get double figures again. Shane had 8lb 3oz all on the float.
My net today
Back at Fry’s and it seemed like nobody had got amongst the bream today, with 3 bream being the best caught by Geoff Francis. However, there were quite a few double figure bags of chub and roach, in the end 19lb was enough to win, and the champion today was my teammate Paul Isaacs. Paul had chub and perch on the gbait feeder at peg 123 at Jack Whites, well done mate! Second was regular money winner Sam Johnson with 15lb 12oz of mainly roach from Newbridge peg 59.
Shane was well happy when I told him he could have been second if he had landed the pike lol!
Here’s the results with section winners and top 10. I managed to continue my pick ups on the river with yet another default section win 😉😉 Thanks again to Ray Bazeley and Paul Benson for running the match, over two grand raised we think. Well done all involved today.
No fishing next weekend, then it’s back up Newbridge the following weekend.
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