The draw began, Rich was going to A section and me B, I drew B2 which put me on peg 42, a peg I’ve drawn quite a few times but generally later in the season. Rich was on peg 30.
My thoughts on this match were that bream would feed (they usually do early season) but the roach would not. The trouble with bream is they don’t show everywhere, but Warren Bates had fished my peg last week and caught 4. The river was sluggish, where’s all that rain water gone?
My peg is a long way off the water, I needed my 4m landing net pole and keepnet.
Even though I doubted the roach would show I would still ball it on the pole line, as skimmers or bream could show on this. I set up a 4g flat float with 0.13 to 16 N20, and 1.5g with 0.12 to 18 N20. I set a gbait feeder up with 14 to 0.15. I half set up a waggler but ran out of time. During setting up a fish, or fishes was crashing around my peg, I thought it was trout. It continued during the match.
We started at 9:30 and you could hear the sound of gbait being balled in. I started on the pole with caster on the hook, didn’t get a bite so switched to maggots and finally got a bite from a 1/2oz perch not good. After about 45 minutes on the pole I had about 15 fish that wouldn’t weigh a pound. Time to give the feeder a go, and putting on 3 red maggots I expected to get a few rattles from chublets and perch. Nothing first cast, but next cast a couple of rattles and then a decent bite, and wow I was attached to a bream. Played it carefully, not a big one 3 1//2lb probably, but most welcome. The next 4 or 5 casts were biteless which I was puzzled by. I hadn’t put any chopped worm in so decided to try this now, as I turned to get some worm to chop up I saw the rod tip hammer over and thought the rod was going to be pulled in! I picked up rod and nothing was on, that was because the fish had snapped the line.
Didn’t get any more bites on the feeder for an hour, so tried the pole line again, just a tiny roach and then a 4oz hybrid out of the blue. Back on the feeder and it was totally unresponsive, so I left it out for ages whilst finishing putting up the waggler rod. Two bleak on the waggler, again just couldn’t get bites. Dropped back in the pole line on the flat float and worm and had a tiny perch, only bite on this. Tried my other rig and was just about to give up when the float buried. I hooked something that violently pulled the float down repeatedly, was it a huge perch or eel? Then this fish changed tack and sped off at pace to the middle of the river, as I hung on everything went slack. The fish hadn’t snapped me just pulled out. There was no slime on the line, and I’ve never experienced the way that fish fought initially. I was now beginning to think that these two fish I lost were poxy trout.
Basically this was my match over, in the next half of the match I had 1 tiny perch on the feeder. It was almost as though there were no fish in the peg. I did fish the feeder a lot, and as it turned out it was the right thing to do, but I knew I was going to have a bad result today especially as heard bream were caught.
My paltry net when 5lb 1oz, which only best 1 in the section. Derek Coles won my section and the match with 50lb of bream to 8lb, he told me he lost 5 fouled bream and saw nearly 20 bream roll. I needed another 2 bream for decent section points. On my right on peg 40 Nick Coles had landed a foul hooked bream and a skimmer, on my left on 46 the angler had 2 bream in 2 casts. In A section Jerry Pocock started off fishing for chub but lost a few in a snag, he the cast a feeder out and had 5 bream in 5 casts and a few more later to get 40lb, next angler ounces, next angler Mike Weston 4 bream, next angler less than 2lb…. That’s bream fishing!
Fish of the day was caught by Dean Harvey on a peg behind the pumphouse, he landed a 5lb 8oz chub caught on the float, nice one! That meant he and Derek were top points pair on the day.
Top weights today all bream.
Not a good day for me, but my partner Rich did well to come halfway by catching 7lb of chublets on float and feeder. I’m sure my luck will change, and I’m going back to Acorn on Tuesday to have another bash there.
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