New River Season - Pleasure fishing on the Bristol Avon

At long last the 16th June arrived and I went fishing... umm no I didn't. I was really busy with work stuff this week and I could not get the time off to go, gutted. However, I did manage to get time off on Friday 19th June and was going to think about where to go. In the meantime I had to put up with all of the messages of people bagging up on bream at Newbridge and Chequers, as well as some nice nets of roach in places. I was itching to go! Then came the storms and rain, and in Bristol it rained non stop for about 30 hours. I didn't even bother setting my alarm for Friday morning as it was still going to be raining!

On Friday I eventually got out of the house around 11am and first popped to Jack Whites where Tyler Ewans-Alder was fishing with mans gear, speci rods out with fishmeal gbait and pellets. He had a long wait but then had a 6lb barbel and a couple of bream. The river was though running quickly and very coloured. I fancied fishing the peg above Tyler (just below the lock gates) but another angler was opposite and was casting right down the peg so no go for me. I thought I would go and have a look at Conham and see if I could get on a peg just up from the carp park. I got there and found a couple of anglers fishing, clueless, and I tried to give them some pointers. I got in on a peg I used to fish a lot many moons ago.

It is just above some flats and below a weir, and the main flow is mainly across as you are fishing down from a big bend in the river. Not a good peg on low flow, but usually nice on pacier days like today.

I had gone with minimal gear and was using this session as a bit of a workout before an upcoming match at the weekend on the river. With the colour and pace I expected the groundbait feeder to be the best approach, then realised I didn't have my reels with 6lb line on, only 3lb, ooops. Ah well best not strike hard or fish to far out! Anyway, all set up with 16 N30 to 0.14 and emptied 6 feeders out about 1/4 out. I started fishing at about 12:30, and it was a bite a chuck, but from dace and odd roach, but the dace bites were a nightmare to hit. Whilst fishing I saw a bream about 5lb jump clear of the river like a salmon, quite amazing. After an hour I was going nowhere missing bite after bite, and whilst I hadn't considered a float to work I decided to set up a 14BB crowquill for the 11 foot deep swim. I wasn't sure this would work, but it did. Bites straight away. Not easy of course, the pace was tricky, the bottom was a bit uneven and snaggy in places, and dace bites aren't the easiest to hit.

I had a good run of fish by throwing in a ball of groundbait with casters in, every cast out. I was using Sonubaits lake, brown crumb, and some Tigerfish. Now Tigerfish is a fishmeal mix and I had put it in to try and catch some bream on the feeder, but surprisingly it wasn't putting the dace off. Things slowed down a tad and the fish I caught were spewing up groundbait, so I cut back on the feeding. It didn't seem to help much but I ticked over, and then I started to get a few more roach, and some of them were 8 to 10oz.

As we came to about 3:30pm I found some fish in a bit closer and I went back to a ball a chuck and started catching some cracking dace with a couple I'm sure close to 8oz. I had 1 chublet and 1 perch in this time too, plus some roach including another beauty. I ran out of gbait and carried on fishing and still caught more dace for about 20 mins till it slowed and I called it a day. I wasn't using a keepnet today so I don't have a catch shot, it is also hard to estimate my catch but I guess it was 10lb to 12lb in 3 1/2 hours. To be honest I am staggered I caught on the float, in fact during fishing Shaun Townsend rang me and said he couldn't believe I was catching on the float (he had walked the river earlier at Jack Whites) and neither could I! There you go, that's the beauty of fishing, some days things happen you don't expect, today I went with the expectation of bream on the feeder and ended up with a nice bag on the float.

There are not many pegs cut out here these days which is a shame, and I had to fish off a high bank but am used to that. However, if you like your river fishing I would strongly urge you to fish at Conham, it's free and all you need is a rod licence. Sunday a match at Chequers, this extra water will run out quick, but I still expect the match to be dominated by bream, let's see if I can catch some this time. Oh but I better get my gear sorted out right first!