After the poor draw last week on Newark Dyke I was really hoping to avoid that section this week, that was what I was mostly thinking on the drive up to Nottingham on Friday afternoon, positive thoughts lol. Well your mind does tend to wander when you spend a fair amount of time in traffic jams on Motorways.
We stayed in some digs in the center of Nottingham, bit tricky to find initially but well positioned for a enjoyable evening out, and it didn't disappoint. We actually found out during the evening the sections we were all going to be in. Another amazing organizational stroke of genius by the Angling Trust, they simply applied A section to the first anglers name on the team sheet, next one B, next C, well you get it. That probably meant quite a few captains going to A section, Mark Harper certainly did for us! As for me I was in F section, a split section between East Stoke and Sheldons, G was Newark Dyke and Geraint Powell was the lucky boy going there.
Sections used today.
I was on peg 7 at East Stoke, peg 1 to 6 were in the first field and I was reliably informed many times that all those pegs would do well and likely beat all below them! Barbel were on the cards for most of those guys, with a near 50lb bag of them caught here last week. We were all on the inside of a big bend, and as I expected the river was deepest on the pole line and got shallower as you went across. On my right was a lad called Doug Jackson from Browning West Midlands team, he told me he lived 10 minutes from the river, so a proper local. He was a friendly lad and said we might struggle unless we latched in to any bonus skimmers, or maybe a barbel.
I set up 2 and 3g pole rigs for fishing at 11m, it wasn't a flat bottom with a big rise toward the bottom of the peg, and that had branches stuck on it as I caught a few! I also set up a 0.5 rig for fishing 4m to hand as I could see a lot of bits in close and they might be needed if things were poor. A Flat float, GB feeder, and block end were also put up. No waggler as the pegging was very tight where I was.
We started at 11am and I had a few chucks with the gbait feeder to get some bait in, then put 10 balls of gbait in on the pole line. Doug next to me put the GB feeder down the same line as me so I thought that must be good. I then fished to GB feeder until 11:50, all I had to show from this was one nipped maggot. Doug had a skimmer of 1lb first cast, handy fish. I went onto the pole and the first three runs down were all the same, float held up burst maggot no fish. Maybe bleak I thought, but no I caught a tiny dace and I mean tiny. I messed about with my shotting and depth and could just about catch the odd little dace but it was slow and hard to hook the odd bite I had. I came into the short line and caught 3 little perch and a couple of tiny dace, before it died. I was a bit shocked because there had been so many small fish there earlier I thought I would get some, but they obviously weren't happy in the clear water. Chopped worm caught me 2 perch, but of no size at all.
After about 2 hours I guess all I had was about 10oz in the net, upstream the anglers were struggling but all had a bonus, Paul Glenfield had caught well on the pole. Doug had added a couple of tiny fish to his skimmer, and all talk of the stewards was that it was fishing really hard. More time on the feeder was just wasted, as I never had a bite on either feeder all day despite giving it a good go. I had tried topping up on the pole and it would bring a few bites back but not for long. The inside would yield a few bites but they would go as quick and then it was just bites off minnows. About 90 minutes to go I had 2 roach in 2 drops on the long pole, just as I thought I was going to put a few in the net that really was the end of the pole line.
Not much more to say really, I guess I divided my time up between fishing for bits and a bonus, as soon as the bits moved off I tried for a bonus, the bits would never stay for long sadly. A struggle for me again, and at the end of the match both Doug and myself were saying we had 2lb. As you can imagine I was feeling very hot with no shade to sit in, there was a bit of a breeze at times which helped, but late on it went and it was a proper roasting. Team mate Andy Ottaway was sick and felt ill at the end of the match, am sure he had been affected by the heat.
The scales came down from peg 1 and as suggested I wasn't beating any of them!
Peg 1 had nearly 9 kilos of barbel, peg 2 5.5 kilo of barbel, peg 3 7kilo of barbel, peg 4 4 kilo of bits and skimmers, peg 5 nearly 5 kilo of skimmers and a barbel, peg 6 2.4 kilo. Apparently the top 4 or 5 anglers all had barbel jumping out of the water in front of them most of the day!
My bits went 1 kilo 100g, then I got beat both sides when Doug weighed 1kilo 120g lol. Below him there was another good angler Neil Parkinson who struggled to get 890g. Well I think I can live with that, if the locals can't catch! However, the next angler was a Barnsley Blacks lad who took 3kilo 750g, next angler had 560g. Well there you have it, somehow the Barnsley lad did something amazing, apparently he had all small fish. My weight was only good enough to come 33rd out of 49 in the section, so not great, and needed 2.5 kilos to get in the top 15.
As a team we ended up 18th, which we were pretty pleased with. Andy Ottaway west best performer with 8kilo+ and second in his section, he had a big bream, few skimmers and 2 small barbel at Caythorpe. Martin Barrett had a nice day on the waggler with 5.5 kilo of dace to come 7th in section.
No surprise I guess Barnsley Blacks won again, Starlets second and Cadence Superteam 3rd. Pretty much the three best river teams in the country right there and they all put in many hours of practice.
There were some good individual weights, with the winner in A section having 36kilo 650g of bream, he had just 50g more than the second place angler!!! There were 5 pegs in A section that provided 5 of the top 10 anglers, a big shoal of bream there.
Not my greatest two matches these last two weeks, and in the past I've always done OK on the Trent, but it was not to be this time. Like most rivers it needs some, well a lot, of rain, and hopefully some will come soon for the sake of all our struggling water environments.
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