Commercial House Round 1 - Bristol Avon Swineford to Frys

A busy week this week, got to see England football team play at Wembley, spent a couple of days working in Northern Ireland and then spent Friday travelling to and from Plymouth taking my eldest daughter back to Uni. I also had to peg out a section at Jack Whites, and this was not at all straight forward due to a boat moored in the steps peg and a high tide to contend with. I did my best to give anglers pegs that they could fish from with the tide.

Sunday morning arrived and I checked to see if the moored boat had gone, but alas no, so had to peg around it. Then onto the Crown in Keynsham for an OK breakfast and the draw. Now normally I am given a peg at the Crane, and whilst my first choice is always Swineford I would take the Crane today and hope to avoid the tidal sections at Jackies and Frys. However, Mark Harper had other ideas and drew me at Jackies. We had peg 9 and that meant the end peg, so I was more than happy with the peg and would have to try to beat the dace pegs up in the shallows. I decided to attack the peg with rods only and left the pole in the car and made the walk across the field.

I got to the peg after a nice walk and as I remembered it was a steep peg ravaged by dogs and so it would need some serious digging out first. Thankfully Mark had lent me a spade so I was able to make a good job of it after 15 minutes. This picture doesn't do the steep bank justice.

Sweating like a pig I now had to think about setting up and I was going down the crowquill route, a 12BB float was set up, but I soon changed that to 14BB as the wind was horrendous blowing downstream. An 18 to 0.12 was I thought right for the fishing today. I set up a waggler and a feeder too. I took my box and other stuff down the peg and got as comfy as I could, I Was about 3 foot off the water but with the tide coming up by at least 2 foot I was going to stay where I was.

When the match began at 11pm the river was still rising and it did so for nearly 45 minutes. I tried fishing a maggot feeder across to the trees but this was a waste with no bites at all. I did take 4 perch on a lobworm tail cast randomly round the peg. Then as the river started to drop I threw in 5 balls of gbait and went over the top with the crowquill with double maggot on the hook. I had a few bites almost straight away and had a couple of dace and a perch, then a couple of chublets. I threw a small ball of gbait in about every 4 runs down and it was proving successful with bites coming straight away and all down the peg. The wind was an absolute nightmare, but even with a bow in the line I could get bites. I spent about 90 minutes putting fish in the net fairly regularly, and they were decent size.

With about 2 hours to go the peg went from regular bites to a real struggle, I could hardly get a bite. I tried loose feeding a bit of bait, reduced hook and line size but all to no avail. Two hours to go I reballed it and added a bit of worm for good measure. It did not work at all, and with 90 mins to go I was in trouble as I needed to get bites regularly on the float but now I could not get any. I went for a quick walk and my worst fears were confirmed with Nicky Johns getting one a bung above me and Jeff Surmon getting a few too. I thought I only had 5lb at most and that would be probably last in section. I spent most of the last hour on the feeder looking for a bonus bream, but I had 2 perch and a roach and that was it. I was gutted.

Packing up I was quite down, I had expected to catch at least 10lb off this peg today, if not more. I could not believe that being on an end peg the bites dried up, maybe I pushed the peg too hard, but I expected a lot more and when I did catch I caught really well.

The scales were going to be unkind to me, and so it proved, with my lowly 6lb 12oz beating only one angler in the A div and a couple of B div anglers. Nicky Johns on the peg above me caught small roach all day on the crowquill and won the section with a high 11lb, well done. He balled it and loosefed over the top.

On the overall stakes today the match was won by Glenn Calvert on peg 3 at Swineford with 21lb of bream and skimmers. Liam Braddell was on peg 15 at Swineford and had a good 18lb for second. Clive Branson on peg 2 at Swineford had 15lb of bits for 3rd and young Andy Cranston was last in the frame with a high 14lb from just above the bay at the Crane.

Thatchers B won the A dive and my Thatchers A were second. Maver Cadbury won the B div today.

The river fished OK but it did not hit the heavy heights of previous years, I feel it is still to clear and the rain we've had has done nothing. I cannot fish the next round as I'll be in the sun, so no blog now for a few weeks.