Bathampton Pairs Series

Back to the river and the second round of six of this series. I was advised by match organiser Dean “Turkey Teeth” Harvey that the match would be held in the Trees section of the river (by Stothert and Pitt Rugby club). Fair play to Dean and Derek Coles and others who did some great work swim clearing before hand, these guys are doing their best to keep the river matches going.

I woke up before my alarm clock went off Sunday and had plenty of time to get ready and some grub. The Trees section can be very peggy and usually the further down the section the better it can be. Derek had pegged it and advised that bream were rolling in the bottom of B section and predicted B6, B7 and B8 to do well. As last match I had a bad one it meant partner Rich Lacey and I needed to have a good match to drag ourselves up the board. I let Rich draw and he got himself end peg B8, good start, he got me A6 which really meant nothing as probably would be a fair section I hoped.

Got to the peg and noticed how coloured the river was, must have been some heavy rain upriver maybe, hopefully not sewage related. The pace on the river was slow but it varied.

I was going to have to get in the river to fish comfortably, and so was a bit miffed I didn’t bother to bring my platform, still with extended legs it was OK just.

As I was setting up I realised I had left my feeder reels on my ready made up carp rods, but luckily that kind man Dean Harvey leant me one, Dean was on A7 below me, and about 100 yards upstream of me was Mike Weston on A5. We three had a bit of banter just before the match started 😂. Also during setting up I got bit on the arm by a large ant, but that wasn’t as bad as Lee Wardens partner Craig who tripped up fell in and split his nose when his box landed on his face.. ouch. Thankfully he was ok and fished the match.

I wasn’t expecting a lot of fish to be caught today, and so I decided against a balling in approach. Also I sacked the pole off deciding to go rods only. I put a 5g bolo up with 0.12 accupower to 18, a 4AAA waggler with same hook, and a gbait feeder with 14 to 0.15.

Match started 9:30, there were already plenty of rowers about, I started on the bolo throwing in a small ball of gbait with caster and hemp, meanwhile I could hear the barrage of gbait going in elsewhere. It took three casts to get a bite which I missed, and missed the next, I was already thinking the pole would have been better as the flow was so slow. But I started connecting with the bites, catching a few small roach, perch that were all swung in. The river then started to run faster, this seemed to kill the bites but I got one more and when I struck it felt like a better fish. Wasn’t sure what it was but after a couple of minutes saw it was a poxy pike with a chublet in its mouth. I kept the pressure on and was rewarded when the pike finally let go. Probably 6oz, but was badly injured. The bolo line was dead now, and then due to a boat changing direction I lost my rig to it, would put another on as I fished the feeder.

Onto the gbait feeder, I had not fed this at all and wanted to get a feel for it but would have 6 fairly quick casts. After an hour on the feeder I had got 1 ruffe… Dean below me had ounces at this stage, as did Jerry Pocock below him, but Mike had caught some small fish on a whip. I probably had 1lb 8oz at best. Middle part of the match was dire for me, wanted to try the wag but too many boats, bolo line was still dead, feeder produced another Ruffe. My partner Rich had started well as he caught some roach on the pole and had a couple of good eels, no bream despite him seeing 3 roll. Out of desperation I decided to throw 4 balls of gbait on the bolo line as it couldn’t make it worse. Had about 10 runs through on the bolo and was about to give up when I had a bite out of the blue, a nice perch of 12oz and definitely a bonus. But that was the last bite on this line.

Finally the boats abated and I could feed and fish the waggler line. I could get the odd bleak and was at least putting something in the net, couldn’t catch any chublets that had been showing themselves along the river before the match started. A large barge going to fast went right over the waggler line, that killed it for 15 minutes. Got the bleak back but bites tailed off, that was fine as I planned to spend the last 30 minutes on the feeder looking for a bonus. With 5 minutes left I had the tiniest of bites and wasn’t going to strike, but the tip moved a tiny bit again and again so I struck. Wasn’t the bream I wanted, but a 6oz hybrid. Match over.

Another tough day on the river for me, but I felt like I had fished a decent match, but not sure how I would do in the section.

Jerry and Dean below had 7oz and 8oz respectively showing how tough it was, my fish went 4lb 2oz which I was fine with today.

Mike above me paralysed our section with 13lb which was a bream and 4 skimmers, but nobody else had a bream in our section. I ended up third in the section as Jeff Surmon had 5lb 6oz, he had quite a few chublets on the float and feeder.  As the anglers started to walk up the bank it was clear that A section had fished much better than my section. The winner came from B6 Warren Bates having 35lb 2oz of bream. Warren explained he had some quick casts on the feeder to start and during these quick casts he caught 2 bream, a great start but he had a long wait for 4 more, well done. Rich had managed a small bream and had 10lb 2oz which got him second in the section and third overall.

Weigh sheets here..

As for the pairs, well it was a bit of a twist with many who did well last round bombing out this time. Myself and Rich were top pair on the day, this dragged us up to second overall now on 20 points. Mike Weston and Pete are leading with 24 points, but as you’ll see it’s all very tight at present. Next match is in 2 weeks time back upstream at Newbridge.