Winter league practice open Bristol Avon

 Well it’s been a few weeks since I was on the bank, I had a holiday in Zante, and then a couple of family things which included moving my eldest daughter Lucy out of our house into her new home with her boyfriend Jack. I missed the first round of the ATWL on the Thames, but I wasn’t missed as the team did the business winning the first round convincingly, Diawa Gordon League had an off day coming last, so maybe they might give us a chance this year lol. 

This open match was effectively a practice for the second round, being fished on the Avon at Chippenham and Melksham. After the rain we had earlier in the week the river has been flooded, but today it was float fishable if a bit pacey in places. There’s a Greggs near the draw in Melksham so I grabbed some breakfast in there first which was good. Thatchers had 6 anglers fishing today so hopefully we would get some good practice. I drew a peg at Chippenham about 4 pegs below the blue bridge, team mate Rob Jones drew two below me on the end peg and he followed me to the river as he had no clue where he was going.

It was a nice easy walk to our pegs thanks to following Neil Richards through the housing estate. I was the peg below Neil and we both had plenty of room, my peg looked good.

A quick phone call to Martin Barrett gave me a little info, though to be fair at the draw I had been given various suggestions on what to do. With the flow and features it screamed a running line approach, so not being a team match I went with rods only. A 4AAA waggler with 16 to 0.13, a 5g bolo with same gear (looking for chub on these rods). A 6x4 stick float with 20 to 0.10 and a maggot feeder with 16 to 0.17.

Match started at 10:30 and I began on the waggler. I soon realised that the flow was coming away from the far bank and so I cast the waggler down the peg a bit. With the speed of the river my maggots would be taking a while to sink anyway. It wasn’t the best first hour, a couple of small chublets and bleak for about 1lb. The bolo produced a couple of roach and the stick float in closer was biteless bar minnows.

Neil had a chub on the feeder earlier and so I switched to that, gave it 90 minutes but just had a couple of gudgeon, a roach and 2 small chublets. I was really struggling to get bites and was already thinking I would need some chub to do any good. At 1:30pm three hours into the match I started to get the odd bite on the bolo from small roach, but I couldn’t line them up. 

The stick float remained dead and I sacked it off. I spent the last two hours switching between the waggler and the bolo, it was better than earlier but no decent fish, I ended the match with about 40 fish and never used my landing net once. I wasn’t going to do any good today. Rob Jones on the end peg had a lovely day catching 15lb roach and 1 chub, above him there was a 12lb. My fish went 5lb 4oz, then Neil had 7lb above me. Well and truly battered today, but I gave it my all and it was nice to trot a float.

The match was won by Mick Withey with an amazing 20lb of perch at Scotland Road!

A couple of chub weights were next at. Chippenham where Ian Dunlop had 19lb and Tony Ellis Randell had16lb. Rob got 4th and last in the frame.

I will need a better performance next week, let’s hope the rain stays away.