Sunday 5 February 2023

Dry January


 It has been some time since I fished and since I did my blog. The floods and general bad weather cancelled a couple of matches and I just couldn’t get the enthusiasm up to go. Dry January in the title refers to a couple of things, 1) my keepnets stayed dry as I actually did not fish at all in January and 2) The wife and I were not drinking any alcohol, except for when we went to Barbados for a nice holiday in the sun. 

We joined on the beach by a friend, think it was cluckers peg lol. Also came across a nice pub.



I got back from Barbados just over a week ago and stayed off the booze till yesterday as I was at Rovers in hospitality. Well although we lost the game it was a fantastic day out and the pints were going down very easily. Let’s just say I was rather worse for wear when I went to bed.

Woke up this morning at 8:15 which meant I had missed the draw, I was struggling a bit, quite a bit, and my wife told me to go back to sleep. However, I had promised Dean Harvey that I would be there and I didn’t want to let him down. He had already text me my peg and so I got myself ready. I rang Dean to let him know I would get there eventually, and I arrived at the bank and as I pushed my trolley from peg 18 the all in was called lol. By the time I got to peg 50 I had decided to only set up 1 rod for the gbait feeder. I was set up and fishing at 10:40.


The river was very clear and having a frost and now bright sunshine I wasn’t expecting a lot of action, also a match here last week was won by Mike Shellard on 18 with 30lb of bream, but half the anglers blanked and 1 chub was third. It took me an hour to get a bite and I missed it, and I missed the next. I can’t remember when exactly but Darren Gilman came walking along, and sat with me a while. I missed another bite and reduced the hook length I was using 0.13 to 16N30.

I then had real savage bite and when I picked up the rod  there was nothing there, couldn’t believe it, but then saw no hook, bitten off by a chub, damn. Went up to 0.15 after this. I also had 2 occasions where I never had a bite but reeled in to find 3 red maggots had been taken, even Darren was amazed. Darren decided he had seen enough and walked on to see the anglers above me. Not long after he went I had 1lb hybrid and a small roach.and was happy to have not blanked.

Darren returned and said Andy Ritchings on end peg 59 had 3lb and he was best by far. I managed to catch a couple more roach, then with about an hour left I had a chub of 1 1/2lb and another roach. I was hoping this was going to be the best time for bites, but far from it and catching the chub seemed to kill the peg. Then about 2 minutes before the match was ending I had another big chub bite, but I never hooked it and the bait was not touched. Not fished a great match but I was feeling substantially better than I did in the morning!

Andy weighed first and had a level 4lb, and that won him the match!

Mike Weston chucked back 2 roach, and the my efforts went 3lb 6oz which was second in the match.

In third place was Derek Coles who found a shoal of tiny roach and bleak on peg 3 and had 3lb. Next best weight was only 12oz. The river here continues to fish terribly, who knows why? However, there’s certainly a lot of plastic, sanitary towels all draped in the trees, so goodness knows what shite was in the river when it was  flooded. 

Not sure what’s on next weekend, and with more frosts forecast it’s not going to be great anywhere I guess, but I will be sober 😂


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