Pairs League - Newbridge

No blog posts from me for a while as I’ve been really busy with other social events. This meant I was not able to fish the first two rounds of this league and I was indebted to Shaun Townsend and Rich Whitmarsh covering for me and keeping me and my partner Rich Lacey in contention. After two rounds Jerry Pocock and Nic Coles were clear leaders. 

My preparation for this match was a bit short and being at Warren Bates stag do was probably not the best preparation… 🤣 but it was a cracking day out 🍻

Got to the river before the 7:30 draw time, then realised I’d left my 2 litres of squash at home, definitely was going to miss that! Unfortunately more boaters had decided to moor up illegally and pegs 16 and 18 were unfishable.

Rich did the draw for us as I was still loading my trolley, I fancied A1 to A3 for a good days fishing. Rich drew be B8 so a long walk for me to permanent peg 59, a very deep peg that is a good bream peg, but the bream aren’t feeding at the mo. Rich was on A5 permanent 30, and not the best we thought.

Setting up on 59 I put a groundbait feeder up first, 14 to 0.15, groundbait was Thatchers green. A waggler was put up but as I only caught 2 bleak on it it’s not getting a mention. A 2g pole rig with 20 to 0.10 and a 3G with 16 to 0.13 for fishing worm. My plan was to loose feed the pole line today, and I did this from the start feeding maggots and hemp (couldn’t feed casters as I only had a pint due to the maggot shortage). I started the match on the feeder hoping for a lucky bream, but after 45 minutes I just had 2 roach and a perch.  Onto the pole and I had 2 perch and a roach, I was properly struggling.

After 90 minutes I called Dean Harvey who was below me on the Norfolk Reeds peg. He was doing well having had a 6lb+ bream and lots of perch on the feeder.  I needed to get some bites, so I decided to put more worm in on the feeder line and now feed worms on the pole line.  This did improve things in that on the feeder I had a some small perch, a 6oz skimmer and two chublets. The pole worm line gave up some small perch which petered out.

I spent the last hour on the feeder hoping for a bream, but it never came but I added a few more small roach and perch.

I thought I had just over 4lb, and was not expecting to do well. Toby on the end peg had 9lb 10oz of mainly roach on the pole, then Dean had 15lb 1oz. He caught on the crowquill for the last 3 hours, and had tons of bites he said. 

My net went 5lb 1oz so a right battering of Dean.

There were it seemed pockets of fish and only 1 other bream was caught in the section by Mike Weston. As you can see from the board I got 5 points and was the best of the worst weights, definitely needed a bream or 2 to get good points.

Down in A section Lee Warden had a good day catching on a 6m whip and long rod to catch 14lb 13oz of roach and chublets. Rich did brilliant to get 8lb 5oz and 8 points.

Dean won the match and with his partner Derek coming second in his section they smashed the day and as a result are now leading the pairs league with 39 points. In second with 38 points is myself and Rich, then Jerry and Nic have 36 1/2 points after blowing out today. With 3 matches to go though it’s really close with most pairs having 30 points plus. The next round is in 2 weeks, 1 section at the trees at Saltford and 1 at Swineford.