Another week passed by and I watched avidly the weather forecast, as the week went on it seemed heavy rain was coming our way. The Wye Champs got cancelled as they had lots of rain, but it wasn't until Saturday that we had a proper deluge here in Bristol. The Avon at Keynsham was a big mess by the afternoon, but it seemed the upper Avon was fairing OK. I awoke early Sunday morning (the extra hour helped) and immediately heard the heavy rain which had been going for a couple of hours. The drive to the draw at Melksham was a steady one as their were many huge puddles and I had to be very careful. The heavy rain persisted as we got to the draw at 8am when I was told I was off to Barton Farm. It was still hammering down until about 9am I think, and the river was already coloured and showing signs of rubbish coming down.
I set up a feeder rod with 14N40 to 0.15, a 5g flat float, 3g pole rig, and 2 bleak whips. I was well aware the river was going to get nasty and so did not want to fish that far out and lose the ability to fish there. I plumbed around with a 3g pole float and settled on 8m out. I ran the rig through and also dropped the lead in here and all seemed ok. As we got to 10:30 when the match started the river had already got a lot worse and my 3g rig didn't seem right anymore. I cupped 6 balls of gbait in at 8m to keep everything tight and went in with the flat float. I gave this about 10 mins but this was not working well, and flow was now disturbed and causing the float to move in and out an up and down. A bigger flat float may have helped but probably not for long. I cast a straight lead out over this line (no need for a feeder as plenty of grub in the gbait) hoping to pick up some early roach. Sadly I had a mare with a snag for about 5 casts. A slightly different cast and with a worm and 2 maggots on I had a definite tremble, I left it to tremble some more and when I could resist no more I struck, it was an eel of about 10oz, saved the blank.
Next cast no bite and no snag, next cast another trembler resulted in an eel of almost the same size as the first. A couple more casts with no bites saw me changing to the feeder to get some more worms and casters in the peg. Well nothing showed itself other than more snags and I was cheesed off putting on new hooks, so I decided to try the whips for bleak, I guess this was just over an hour in. No bites at all from bleak. Back to the feeder which was more snags and no fish, and I was frustrated as I wanted to give this a good go but was being bad
ly hindered, I even tried fishing further out and whilst I did snag up a lot less I never had a sign. Trying my 4m whip into the flow I had no signs of bleak. Coming in shorter I finally caught a tiny bleak, at least I think it was a bleak. I could now catch these small 3 or 4 to the ounce bleak, it wasn't one a bung but I was just happy to put something in the net. I kept on these for just over an hour I guess and then they vanished. To be fair the river was now boiling a lot and I am sure the bleak moved off somewhere off (found after that Mark Treasure above me in A section started to catch bleak in the last half of the match and it just got better for him).
The last couple of hours for me were poor and whilst I did have looks for the bleak it was never long as they did not come back. In fact I had my third bite on the feeder 5 minutes before the end when I had a 4oz roach out of the blue. I had no idea what had been caught in my section, but didn't think my 2 1/2lb estimate would be very good. I packed up and dropped down to the last peg in the section as I had the weighing in board. The last peg in the section had a massive slack, and the angler on there Kev Morris won our section with 4lb 2oz of small roach on a 4m whip. I weighed in 2lb 12oz for 3 points out of 6. My board below, Paul below me had the same trouble as me, snagging up mostly.
I was of course disappointed with that result, and I think I made a mistake of actually fishing to close in, and maybe 11m would have been less snaggy. However, chatting to many locals they all said it wasn't a great peg in the conditions. Very few bleak were caught in my section, more upstream, and the section below was even worse. The river we were fishing at the end was rancid and full of weed and not much fun for most. There were of course a few anglers who had some fish in front of them and did the business...
Kev Rowles was the winner today with 15lb of mainly roach and a few big perch all caught close in on the pole on his peg at the top end of Barton Farm.
Derek Jarman was 2nd from a peg in Chippenham Park, he had 3 bream for 10lb 13oz
Mark Brush was 3rd with 10lb 2oz of bleak from end peg at Scotland Road.
On the team front DGL won the day with 35 points, my Thatchers came second with 31 (that's the same place every match so far), and Devises were third with 30 points.
Overall Thatchers have 6 points and DGL are second with 9 points. Three rounds to go and all still to play for. The 4th round is back up here next Sunday, except Barton Farm shouldn't be in this time. The current weather forecast is for no rain this week, and so hopefully a much better river for all to fish... fingers crossed!
Some pics from last week that I couldn't upload before are below...
My bag
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