Lower Avon Teams of Four

 Normally I would be fishing the Commercial House League at this time of year, but the Lower Avon Teams of Four league run by Ben Rendall was more appealing to my Thatchers team. It was looking like 7 teams were fishing, but then I heard that two teams pulled out just a week or two before, shame. I don't know what it is that anglers don't want to fish the Bristol Avon around Keynsham, this time of year it is generally full of fish, I guess easy walks and pellets are more attractive?

I helped peg the match with Shaun Townsend and Ben Matthews on Saturday, we put 5 pegs at Chequers, 10 at Jack Whites and 5 up the Crane. Everyone would have lots of room and hopefully a few fish. I hoped to draw Jack Whites..

Most of the team met at Wetherspoons in Hanham where I had a large brekkie and Cranberry juice. Thatchers have two teams in, and my lot were Towner, Mark Harper and Rob Manns. The other side were Matt Challanger, Paul Isaacs, James Carty and Andy Greenham. Mark did our team draw, no Jack Whites for me... I was down Chequers on the upstream end peg round the bend from the straight, with the other 4 pegs on the straight I was not confident about a good finish. below me on the top of the straight was Derek Coles. Derek was on a peg that I used to know as the rock face, not that you can see it so well these days, but it was always a good peg for roach and chub as the flow pushes across, he would get a few I thought.

My peg has no features across, just reeds, and the flow is halfway and across, so I put the pole out of my mind today for roach.

I set up a waggler and a whip (both never used) a feeder rod (chucked out a few times) a 14BB crowquill with 0.11 accupower to 18 N10, and a 6m pole line for chopped worm with my faithful 1g rig with 0.15 to 14 N50.

There was a tide on today and so the start of the match was 11:30 which was great as the river had dropped to normal level by then and was still flowing. I threw 8 balls of gbait to the middle of the river (sonubaits black river and black roach) and then put 8 feeder fulls right across to give myself a place for bream if they fed. I went out with  the crowquill with caster on the hook and I was pleased to get a bite first run down, it felt like a good fish, but it was a foul hooked dace! I had a bite every cast and it was just a case of trying to hit them and work out what was going on, I had a few dace and a few roach. Then the dreaded hold ups, where the body of the crowquill is shown, small bleak and small dace were in the peg now. I had not loose fed the peg and all that was in was my initial groundbait balls. I had no choice but to reduce the length of hook to bulk to get passed the snots as I was sure there were more decent roach to catch. It did work to a fashion, but hitting bites was a bit tricky.

I had stuck with the float for 90 mins but then gave the feeder a line a go hoping for that quick bonus, alas no sign of bream and even double worm was ragged by bits. Back on the crowquill and I was feeding small balls of my gbait mix with hemp and caster mixed in to keep the fish in the peg, and avoided loose feeding to keep the bleak away. I was always getting bites, but hitting them was not easy as many were fast dace bites. Mid match I had a bit of a melt down, the wind got seriously a pain, blowing right in my kisser and causing the line to get behind the spool on at least 10 occasions!!!! I had to snap the line twice and tie it back together, never good to have a knot in the mainline, but I managed. To say I had tourettes a few time would be an understatement, my wife came and sat behind me and watched for a hour, and commented on my swearing lol. About 10 minutes after she went a creature appeared from the far bank and swam towards me, a creature my wife is very, very scared of! It was a grass snake of about 3 feet long and it went into the bank to my right but I never saw it again.

I took about 10 small perch on my short chopped worm line, but this was slowing up and then I hit a snag and lost the hook so this went up the bank! I focussed my attention on the crowquill, and the bits had finally gone in the last hour, bites were a lot slower but when I did connect it was always a nice roach of 3 to 4oz. I had my best fish a roach of 6oz in this last spell on a red maggot, though most of my fish came on caster. Match ended at 16:30 and I guessed I had 10 to 12lb.

Whilst packing away Derek came up and told me had really had a great day and reckoned on having 20lb! Oh dear I might be in trouble as I knew Ben Rendall had 8lb after 2 hours! I had the scales and would soon find out.

My fish were weighed first, and I was happy to weight 12lb 12oz, I think 14lb+ was possible but as it turned out that would not have made a difference. Derek took the section out with 20lb 11oz, 13lb of roach and the rest chub, all on a bolo float fished across in the flow. He lost two big chub which snapped him up! I ended up second in my section which I was relieved to get, Andy Greenham had 11lb 11oz and Ben Rendall 9lb 5oz (his peg died on him big time). 

We went back to the Lock Keeper in Keynsham for the results and I was hoping my team had done well as we had Rob Manns won his section, Mark Harper second and Towner beat one. Indeed our 15 out of 20 points was enough to win the day, so a great start. 

Derek Coles won the match (and that got me the £40 section money by default, happy days!) and ORb Manns was second with 15lb 13oz at Jackies, Ben Matthews third from Chequers with 15lb 11oz. Every section was won with double figures.

Teams on the day..

I've had an absolute nightmare with my laptop tonight, I think it is close to going in the recycle bin, taken me ages to upload photos, arrgh! Anyway I hope you had a great weekend and a few fish, and I look forward to the next round of this league in two weeks time. In the meantime the only other thing I have to say is rest in peace your majesty, and God save the King.