After a weekend off fishing I was waiting to hear from the team Captain as to what I would be fishing, either the Bristol Avon at Chippenham / Melksham or down by me at Keynsham. I was happy to fish either venue but was asked to fish the lower Avon on the Commercial House. As the team was down to peg the match I offered to do that, and had the help of Bristol's finest chippy Dean Harvey. What Dean can do with a good piece of wood is just amazing, at least that what he told me.
Friday and the wife and I decided the alcohol free October had been fun but it was time to crack open a bottle of vino. Call me weak, but I had resisted for a long time and did enjoy a nice Malbec. I was up fine and dandy Saturday to meet Dean at Swineford as we began the pegging out, A1 was the outfall and we new Swineford would be tricky as there are not enough pegs to leave out the shitters, but we did our best. We chatted far too much and also had a few calls, enough to put us off the peg numbers we put in, but luckily we avoided a few cock ups LOL. We got to the Crane and met up with Shaun Townsend, now 3 anglers with their own ideas on what to peg is fun, but we seem to sort it out and even managed to walk Shaun's dogs. Chequers was pegged by venue expert Dean, so he can take the blame for that dross lol. I'll say this now, I've pegged lots of matches out, but without a doubt I had the biggest laugh today with these two clowns lol.
Sunday morning, I am determined to get to the draw with time to get a breakfast without rushing, and I was there 20 minutes before the 8am draw yay. However, the pub was not open, due to a lack of communication by the organisation by the Britt / Goodhind family. A later match start was agreed allowing anglers to get at least a McDonalds. I did the draw again and thought I got a fair set of pegs, I was going to Chequers, one off the end peg on the straight, a chance of bream I hoped but unlikely to best the end peg.
Unfortunately my laptop / phone will not communicate today so I cannot upload any photos, a shame as I had a few pics today, maybe I can add them later this week.
My peg has a willow tree growing out into the water and prevents you running a float in the peg (though a pole would be OK) but with the river heavily coloured and pacey I wasn't worried about that. All I set up today was a gbait feeder with 0.17 to 12 N50 and a 3g pole rig but that was no good. At 10:30 I under armed my feeder out about 13m to the edge of the tree and began with 4 red maggots on the hook. I didn't ball it and just had some very regular casts. I had a couple of small perch quite quickly and then not a lot, so I changed up to a lobworm tail and had another perch but then missed a couple of bites. I thought a dendra with maggots would be easier for the perch to snaffle and indeed I had one quite quickly. About 40 minutes in I had a proper bite and this was met with more resistance and I netted a nice skimmer of about 2lb+, next cast and within 20 seconds a similar bite and a 1.5lb skimmer, next cast same result another skimmer, wow! The next cast resulted in no bite and things went decidedly quiet after those three quick skimmers.
I had a visit from some wanderers, Dave Tippet and Darren Gillman, they told me not much was caught , but below me Andy Britt on the end peg had 3 bream for 12lb. Above me Jerry Pocock (who had moaned like a bitch about his peg) was struggling to hit bites from dace and roach on the feeder. As the match progressed it was strange that I was getting no bites from dace / roach whereas Jerry was. I kept altering the hook baits from maggots to worms etc, but all I was now able to catch was the odd perch, and one tiny eel. The bites began to tail off and my pole line had yielded nothing, so I was drifting off the pace and not feeling good vibes that some bream might show up, then Andy told me had another bream.
Jerry came off the feeder and tried running a bolo float through and he started to get bites on this, his peg was shallower than mine and flowing more than mine, as I had slack to 12m, so it seemed roach and dace were happy in his shallower water. With about 90 minutes left to go and the peg quiet I decided to throw in 5 balls of gbait laced with worms, casters and dead reds, shit or bust I guess. It didn't give me any immediate response if I am honest. It was about now that a guy on a boat opposite decided it was a good idea to go for a swim... twat. He jumped in and despite his best efforts he could not swim against the current, and was soon complaining of cramping up. Luckily for him he managed to get back to the boat and out of the cold water. I found out that Andy Britt had a dog go in his peg, it couldn't get out and the owner stripped off and jumped in to get the dog out and Andy helped the bloke get out. What a palaver!
In the last hour I had a couple more perch and then a decent eel of over a pound, finally 10 minutes before the end of the match I had a 6oz roach, my first of the day.
I didn't know how my section had fished, I knew I was well beaten by Andy who was admitting to 21lb, but was hoping I could be second to him in the section. The scales started up at peg 1 and when I caught up with them only 3lb+ was best, that was until Jerry weighed 5lb 6oz. My turn next and my fish went 11lb 3oz which I was happy with, 1 roach, 2 eels, 14 perch and 3 skimmers. Andy then weighed 23lb 3oz to win the section and be the top weight at Chequers overall. However, with Andy likely to frame I was going to pick up the section money, nice :-)
The pub was if course open and happy to us after the match, so the results were done with a few beers and some grub. I thought Andy would have won the match but as it turned out he didn't..
1st Andy Pritchard 29lb 6oz bream and skimmers from just below the boys hole at the crane.
2nd Andy Britt 23lb 3oz
3rd Andy Ritchings 22lb 9oz bream at Swineford first field
4th Derek Coles 21lb 2oz bream end peg Swineford.
5th Dean Harvey 20lb 15oz bream upstream end peg chequers (first out the money bad luck)
6th Mike Shellard 18lb 15oz chub on feeder from peg 17 at Swineford.
As you can see all the sections of the river managed to get into the top 6 today, good pegging out I guess lol. There were some roach caught too, up to 10lbs of them, so not bad given the conditions I think.
Bathampton won A div today with 13 points, my Thatchers team were 2nd with 12 points. Overall with one match left Thatchers are winning the A div by 8.5 points which should really be a big enough gap to win it I hope.
B div was won by Bathampton B and they lead the B div by 11 points and are going to win that unless they all get bolloxed and don't turned up.
It is the final round next week, on the K&A canal, but I won't be there as my services have been called upon by the team for the ATWL up at Chippenham which I look forward too.
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