I am going to try to catch on the blog tonight, so first up will be a report on an open match on the KSD, and next the Super League round one on the KSD.
After returning from Viaduct on Friday, Saturday gave a small window of prep for the KSD as I was going to Tewkesbury to watch my youngest daughter dancing in the theatre, was a great performance and actually brought a tear to my eye. I was up at 6am Sunday to travel down to the 37 Club near Puriton where the local Sensas 88 anglers had done a grand job clearing pegs as well as getting the club to open for breakfasts and a beer after. I actually arrived a bit late and therefor missed most of my team mates and other anglers, the late draw though didn't bring me an end peg flyer, but peg 76 at Parchey, where I nearly always seem to draw. This early in the season I wasn't sure how the venue would respond, but Paul Purchase advised there had already been some decent catches.
I stopped on Parchey bridge to look at the river, it was like a mill pond.
My peg is past the first few barren bank pegs, and has some bushes and reeds on the far bank, I hoped that bit of cover might be work a bream or skimmer on the feeder, that was the first thing I set up and clipped it up, with 16 N30 to 0.13 powerline. I set up a whip but that was not right today and not worth mentioning any more. Also a 1g rig for fishing 22 to 0.08 at 8.5m, a 2g rig with 18 to N20 for fishing out at 13m. A rig for chopped worm off the edge of the lily pads was also set up but I never had a bite on this.
I cupped in some balls of Sonubait Black Roach, and lake containing pinkies, caster and hemp at 8.5m, then cast a big feeder out about 7 times, and wasted some worms lol.
I started on the 8.5m pole and put a big maggot on to see how the fish would react, I was happy to get some bites although the fish (mainly hybrids) were very small, an ounce was the biggest. My neighbours were not visible to me as I was between a couple of bushes and so I had no clue what was going on, though the guy to my left, Tony Twist, was on a feeder and styed on it for most of the day. I wasn't bagging and began to miss far too many bites, I put this down to the size of the fish and switched to a pinkie on the hook, it did improve the fish to bite ratio, but the fish stayed small. I was able to get bites till about 90 minutes in, then it properly slowed down and I gave the feeder 30 minutes, never had a bite on this at all.
I came back on the short pole and caught a couple of fish straight away and then nothing. I did try the long pole a number of times but all I managed here was 1 roach, so a another waste of time really. I could only catch a few fish on the short pole and then I would have to rest it, trouble was I couldn't get a bite anywhere else. However, with just over an hour to go I had a bite on the feeder and landed a skimmer of about 1lb 8oz. It was a one off, but about 5 minutes from the end of the match I had a real fast bite and the bait was gone. Probable a small perch, or maybe an eel, will never know, and the match was over. As people started packing up the bankside banter had some anglers with bream further up, but a lot struggling.
As it turned out I weighed in 2 kilos 350g about 5lb 3oz, and in my ten peg section that turned out to be third, beaten by the last two pegs in the section who would both pick up the section prizes. Weigh sheet below. As you can see the last pegs in the section were poor, and 83 is an end peg.
My net of fish.
Match winner on the day was Steve Priddle on the end peg further down stream from where I was, think he had about 8 kilos, Ben Matthews was second, and I think Mike Bernstein on the upstream end peg above the bridge had some bream for third. Apologies if I missed someone out!
Back to today and round 1 of the Super League. Up at 6am again, but felt quite tired as for some reason I had some problems sleeping. I was though at the club by 8am so in time for a breakky and the 8:30 draw. Thatchers have put 3 teams into this league (4 anglers in each team) and my team mates today were Mat Challenger, Rob Manns and Gary Webber. All of us hoping for decent end peg lol. Team draw done, and I wasn't best pleased when I found out I was one off the end peg on the barren bank by where I was last week. Based on last weeks result I was looking at a low point score I thought.
Got to the peg and found on my right Mike Bernstein on the end peg, how does he do it lol. On my left DGL's Adam Palmer. My set up today was slightly different from last week, I discounted the long pole line, especially as the wind was smack in my face, I set the GB feeder up but wasn't expecting it to be great here, the 1g rig for the 8.5m pole line, as well as a lighter 0.5g. Also the chopped worm rig was assembled. I started the match by casting out the feeder a few times, had a disaster when I had too much grub in the feeder and when I cast out all the contents came out, yeh I know twat. Then cupped 3 balls of gbait in for my small fish line, and bait droppered some worm and caster in at 9m.
Starting on the small fish I was on the big maggot again and it was a poor start when I just could not hit a bite, so on with the pinky early and starting to catch little hybrids and odd little roach. I was happy with this or so I thought until I saw Adam swinging in fish much bigger than mine, clearly I was doing something wrong but I couldn't get the quality to increase. Mike gave the feeder a good go looking for an early bonus, he did have a few small fish on this but he gave it up when he caught a hanging basket lol. My barren far bank line then had a feature, as you can see in the picture, they hung around for about 20 minutes watching us anglers. My feeder line was where their reflections were.
My match wasn't feeling like it was going well, and then a pike grabbed a fish and eventually snapped the hook length. I rested the small fish and tried the worm early, I had a 2oz perch and 4oz chub on this. Another 20 minutes later and another pike strike, but after a tug of war the fish came back flying out of the water. Not long after this I saw a big swirl on the surface, and assumed it was the pike. Ten minutes later another swirl close to my small fish line start and thought that's not a pike, then saw it again and it was a dirty great tench. the small fish line died and I wondered if the tench was in the peg, so adjusted the worm rig and tried it here, alas no joy, and no joy over the worm. I never saw the tench again
The small fish returned over the gbait and I was able to continue putting small fish in the net for the first two hours, then it was like someone flicked a switch and all bites stopped. Adam also struggled now, and Mike did too, but he still sneaked the odd one as I could hear him moaning about pike which now was bugging him and he had about 8 attacks. I tried the feeder for nothing, but it was only half hearted really as I didn't think it would work in this peg. More tries on the worm only yielded 1 tiny skimmer and a little perch. Working both pole rigs and topping up with gbait brought odd flurries of bites from roach, hybrids and towards the end I did get a skimmer of maybe 6oz and my biggest fish. However, as the match came to the end Adam had another good run and Mike was still catching so I was pretty sure I was going to be chip shop sausage today thinking I had 4lb, with Adam saying he had 7lb
No catch shot as I forgot, but I ended up weighing more than I thought with 5lb 8oz. Still not enough as Adam had 7lb 5oz and Mike had 6lb 4oz on the end peg. Those two were first and second in section, and I was 4th as Paul Purchase beat mr by a few ounces with some skimmers on the feeder. Full weigh sheet below, 16 anglers on the board, but it is split into two sections of 8, so I had 5 points out of 8.
Back at the results and it seemed the three Thatchers teams had all done OK without being brilliant.
DGL black were top with 24 points, then Thatchers Sonu and Devises had 23 points, then Thatchers Blue and Green (my lot) and DGL Gold had 22.. all very close for now.
1st today was James Carty of Thatchers with 17lb+ 3 bream and a hundred small roach
2nd Charlie Vallender 16lb+
3rd Kevin Dicks 13lb 8oz
This venue can be very peggy, and so to get a decent result today on the team front is good news. I cannot fish the next two rounds sadly, this is due to other commitments, but here's hoping the team can do well again.
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