Round 6, final match, and we were fishing back in the trees section. After the other two matches here we knew the early pegs in A section were best and late pegs in B section best. Graham Hunt actually said before the draw he wanted to avoid pegs A6 to B3, I couldn’t disagree. Rich drew for us, and for the first time he had a misfire.. peg A7 for him and B2 for me, oh 💩. Worse still the other top pairs seemed to have anglers in the good areas, and I was not sure if we could stay in the top three places overall.
Got to the pegs and we thought we would need a bonus bream to do well as not many roach have shown in our pegs, but it was a long shot. My peg was barren and not inspiring lol.
There was not much flow on the river today so this might slow the fishing down. I set up the usual gbait feeder, waggler, and a couple of pole rigs for fishing on or near the deck.
I started the march by putting 8 balls of gbait with just a small amount of hemp and caster in (Sonubaits black roach and river). Then spent 45 minutes on the feeder casting fairly regular to begin. There were a few small fish about it seemed, and I had 2 roach and a chublet and then another small roach. Reeling the small roach in I noticed a fish chasing it, thinking pike I reeled faster, but it grabbed it. As I pulled I saw it was a big perch over 2lb, but just as I got excited it came off. I was gutted but it would have been a bit jammy to have caught it. Bites tailed off, other than a couple of big Ruffe and tiny perch.
I thought I would let the feeder line settle and get on the pole, confident of a few roach. Well I got that wrong, 30 minutes of trying gave me just 4 tiny perch. Back on the feeder and another Ruffe and no bites, this was even worse than I expected. Rich was in the same boat and we were head scratching. On my right Warren Bates had just a couple of small fish, and on my left Lee Warden had less than a pound. It was rock hard, only Dean on A8 had caught a few fish on the feeder early and had 3lb. Dean has drawn the same peg every time so he was a bit annoyed!
Middle of the match and nothing was happening, no bites on the waggler or anything. I got off my box and got a chop worm pole rig out, 1g rig with 14 to 0.15. Bait dropped some worm and caster at an angle 10m down the peg. First two looks over this line yielded a one ounce perch each time. Another waste of bait? The boredom was interrupted by a good bit of banter, and one of Warrens trolley tyres randomly exploding! Occasionally I’d shout down to Lee to make sure he was still awake lol. Also a strange creature swam across the river to my bank, a snake, no, a rat, no… it was a squirrel, glad I had witnesses!
About 2 hours to go I caught 2 roach on the pole out of the blue, but they were the only ones. Another Ruffe on the feeder, and then an hour to go I decided to give the chop worm line one last look. I waited and had a very tentative bite just as before, expecting another tiny perch I was shocked when the elastic came out of the pole. Maybe it was that perch, but then I saw it was an eel and after a couple of attempts it was the net, had to be a good pound and a half, so a mini bonus. I ended the match on the feeder looking for a bream but it never came. Rich and I both were looking at 3lb, and thought we would blow out.
As I packed up the thunder started and I was hoping that the rain would hold off. Derek was on the scales and when he got to me the sky was getting darker over Bath. My fish went 3lb 10oz, catch shot not great due to apprentice photography 😂
As expected I was the wrong end of the section and got 4 points from 8. As you can see on the section board my neighbours faired worse. Mike Weston found a couple of bream to win the section and he won the match, top man.
In A section Rich Got 3 points, again wrong end of section, Dean did really well.
As we pushed our trolleys back the thunder got louder and spots of rain fell. What we didn’t need was Dereks trolley upsetting… twice… FFS 😂. Got back to the van as the downpour started and didn’t stop for well over an hour! Through the pouring rain the results were done by Dean. Poor weights today, only the top three had any bream. Overall the top pair in the league were Craig Pinker and Jan Mazcyk, well done chaps! Jerry Pocock and Nick Coles were second. Myself and Rich were tied third with Mike Weston and Pete, but we got the verdict on weight. Well we were chuffed with that given the pegs we had today.
This has been a great league, hopefully more people will join in next season. Now it’s time to get ready for the winter leagues. My Preston Innovations has a team in the Angling Trust league, and a team in the Commercial House. I would love to get a chance on a couple of fliers 😊
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