Bathampton open Bristol Avon Newbridge

My last chance to fish the river this season and I was able to fish a match being run by Ben Rendall at Newbridge. Bream had been coming out to pleasure anglers and so most people were expecting a decent day. Saturday was spent changing my gear from carp to river bream and I put some 6lb line on my new Centris 420 reel. Got everything done and managed to get down the mem to see the Gas win 2-1, a few bream Sunday would make it a great weekend!

Sunday morning I grabbed a Greggs on the way to the river and arrived in good time. There were 20 of us fishing today, Ben put peg 1 in the little field on permanent peg 3 and peg 20 was permanent peg 50. I drew peg 19 so was on permanent 49 hoped this would be ok, but I did fancy the end peg which was what Pete Mills had. 

It didn’t take long to set up as I just set up a feeder rod with a 14 to 0.15. Groundbait as usual brown crumb, sweet skimmer and Thatchers. A 28g feeder held the bottom pretty well. We started at 10:30 and I spent the first 20 minutes casting regularly to get some bait in. Starting with three red maggots on the hook I soon caught a small roach, after the first hour I had three small roach, Pete had 1 bream. The second and third hour were devoid of any fish activity! I went for a walk and below me Jason Fearn was struggling despite trying running line tactics.

With just under two hours to go I had a lovely bite, pulled round and dropped back, and I was sure I was attached to a bream. Now this would be interesting as sometimes the bream do feed late and it can be good. Alas I soon realised this was a chub but at nearly 3lb it was still welcome, but my bream dream was shattered and no more bites till 3pm. I had a big drop back bite and connected with a big fish, I had to back wind quite a bit. I wasn’t sure what I had hooked but started to get it back towards me, as it got closer to my bank it surfaced and I saw it was another chub and I really had to pull hard to get it to come to me and stay out of the margin snags. It was a fat chub, which weighed later at 5lb 4oz. Next cast I missed another drop back and that was the last bite. (Picture below by ace photographer Derek Coles 🤣

I wasn’t going to weigh in but I wanted to weigh the chub, my total weight was 8lb 11oz that was second in my section behind Pete who had 3 bream and chub for 14lb. Jason had 2lb 8oz and below him Graham Hunt 8lb 3oz of chublets on the waggler. 

Overall the match won by Jeff Surmon on peg 1 with 46lb of bream. Well done mate!

2nd Jan Mazyk 42lb from permanent peg 30 again bream.

3rd Derek Coles 34lb of bream from peg 38.

Warren Bates and Shaun Townsend both had 20lb+ catching mainly on the float.

Biggest bream was 8lb 15oz caught by Ben Rendall, Dean Harvey also had a big bream 8lb 6oz.

Well I was a bit gutted not to draw on a few bream but the big chub was a lovely fish to end my river season on.