It was looking like another difficult week trying to get booked in on a match, in the end Ben Rendall messaged me that he was going to have a little 8 peg match at Chequers. I thought I might as well fish that, close to home and an early start to avoid any public swimming, though the weather put paid to that lol.
After the heavy rain in the week it was obvious the river would come up, and it was high and coloured on Friday but it was dropping nicely after that and everyone fishing thought it would be a bream match. But we've said that before!
The draw was in the field at 7am, which I just managed to get to on time and in attendance were a number of seasoned river anglers. On the last match here (Superleague) the bream mainly were caught on the top pegs, but some of the guys fishing mentioned they had caught bream from the lower pegs in the last couple of weeks. I drew peg 3 which was one below the big concrete culvert on Frys, with Kevin Dicks on the culvert itself, and below me was Mike Weston. Ben Rendall was on end peg 1, and on the upstream end peg 8 was Ben Matthews which was where the bream came from last match.
My peg, you can see the colour in the water.
The match was starting at 8:15 so once I got myself set up in the peg and put together a feeder rod the start was called. I needed a 30g feeder to hold with a bow in the line, F1, Thatchers and brown crumb were in my gbait mix. I didn't ball it as last time that killed the bream fishing, so began on a big feeder to get some bait in. Kev did the same, but Mike threw some in. I began with my usual 3 red maggots on the hook looking to catch anything, and had bites straight away but I could not hook them. Soon found out the culprits, dace. I tried a worm after 30 minutes and was still getting bites on this from dace, and after the first hour I had 1 roach, 1 perch and 2 dace. I kept on ploughing the bait in, and went up to a size 12 to 0.15 and putting two worms on slowed the bites, but not a sign of a skimmer or a bream. The second hour was poor as I did all I could to avoid the dace by fishing big baits, in the end I went to see my neighbours who were both struggling, but not getting many bites. I decided to set up a crowquill, wouldn't take long, 13BB crowquill already on a winder, with 18 N20 to 0.11. Unfortunately this wasn't the answer and it seemed the dace didn't want a moving bait, and I only had a couple of fish on the float, though the wind was a nasty down streamer and wasn't helping.
I then heard Ben Matthews had 6 bream, and another angler had one, so I was highly unlikely to get into the top 2. I decided to fish for the dace, put on a 50g feeder shortened the hook length and fished a single maggot. I hit more bites on this, but still missed too many. I was throwing the odd small ball in and trying the crowquill in between, and then my wife and eldest daughter turned up to watch me, and sneaked a photo of me.
Not sure what happened but in the last hour the float started to go under more. I could only catch on the float over the feeder line which was two thirds over in the main flow. I had tried (earlier) feeding some bait at 13m but never had a bite in this slower water. It was a fair chuck with a crowquill, and if the wind blew hard downstream I would struggle. I enjoyed this period of fishing, I do like catching on the float, and some of the dace were spewing out bait showing they were ravenous. Match ended at 13:15, and hearing that Ben now had 10 bream, and Derek Coles had double figures I wasn't going to trouble the scales today. Lucy took a photo of my fish, maybe 5lb.
I'm sure there was 10lb of dace to be caught on that peg today, but once again the bream blinded me and they avoided my net again lol!. Turned out Ben Matthews was a runaway winner with 41lb in the end, and second was Derek Coles, but he only had 6lb 12oz. Derek had some roach on the float but then fished for bream for the last 90 minutes (as he was next to Ben) but never had any. There wasn't much else caught, a couple of 4lb's. The bream curse had struck again. Second place was definitely there for me today had I fished the float all match, but we'd all be winners in hindsight.
Commercial House begins next weekend, Newbridge for the first round, not much rain in the forecast it seems, so probably going to be a bit clearer next week, hope the pike don't feed!
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