Saturday morning and met up with Lee Trivitt and Rob Jones at Wetherspoons in Tewkesbury just before 7:30. We ate our breakfast and waited for Martin Barrett to do the team draw and share the pegs we had on our WhatsApp group. Secretly I was hoping to be at Pensham as it sounded a bit like Newbridge and some bream to be caught, but I was going to Peg 1 at Pershore and was quite excited about being an end peg. I drove to the river and spoke to a local who thought I was first peg through the gate, but turned out I was before the gate and on permanent peg 4.
There was a set of steps and small platform to fish from, so comfy. But the far bank was boat moorings and full of weed and cabbages. Pegs below me had mostly natural cover across.
As I was setting up a boat arrived, but it stayed all day.
Now the advice I had was fish for an early bream, something I would be happy to do and I set up the gbait feeder. But as I set up I noticed hordes of tiny fish topping off the edge of the bush to to my left. Set up 4 / 5m whips with 0.4g floats and 16 to 0.12 for fishing shallow bleak rigs. Set up a 0.5g float for fishing on the bottom under the bleak on a pole. Lastly a 7 no 4 stick float for fishing hemp down the peg. I did also set up a waggler and worm rig but these were not used.
There were a number of top anglers in my bit, Simon Willsmore was on 2 and further down Leigh Gardner, Darren Cox and Rob Hewison. No pressure!
We started at 11 and I began on the 5m whips, threw in some bronze maggots and the water erupted so I didn’t pick the feeder up. I was soon getting bites but was missing more than I expected. The culprits were tiny dace, chublets and bleak. But there were better fish there as I could tell from the swirls. After probably 30 mins of thrashing the fish were still swirling but I was struggling to get a bite. I decided to change to a 20 to 0.9 and this got me bites again. The river is like tap water and even these small fish are finicky. I came into 4m to hand as the fish were happy to be there, I upped the feed and was trying different depths and hook baits to improve the size of fish, but it was hard to get through the miniatures. Stewards and bank runners said I was doing well and me Simon were catching the same, 3 bream was best further down. So I ploughed on all the time feeding hemp further down and out.
I had a dodgy spell and picked up the deep rig, I caught some more small fish on the drop but did get a few 2oz perch, odd better dace and even a couple of roach. I had to go back shallow again and kept on thrashing. With 90 minutes to go I tried the hemp on the stick, first cast roach, 3rd cast roach and then a long wait for number 3. I rested it and went back on the bits changing between deep and shallow. I had another 2 roach on hemp but it was clearly not right and went back to 5m to hand as the fish were petering out in the last 30 minutes.
Match over and I had a very busy day, hard to say what weight, no idea how many fish as I can’t count them. I was going to be the last to weigh in so when the scales arrived I was all packed up. 17kilo was winning, Simon had just weighed 4 kilo 100g, my fish went 4 kilo 50g, close but no cigar. Still I was dead happy, parked by my peg and bites all day is not something that often happens in a national! Bad pic as catch shots were not allowed in some sections.
I was 5th at Pershore as you can see from the board and I found out later that only one person at Pensham had beat me so I was 6th out of 45, dead happy.
The messages started to come in from the other lads, a few had been on dreadful pegs, but had done all they could. Top performer was Rob Jones with 3 bream and second in section, bit good is Rob. He got the section money be default too.
I went back to the results and saw a few nervous faces as some top teams were trying to work out their points. We were hoping for a top 10 finish and we got that coming 9th, and I was about 32nd best weight overall, so a decent day.
Tackle & Baits won the day, Dorking 2nd and Starlets 3rd. Well done all.
The guy who won my section with 17 kilo actually won the match by about 250g. After his early 3 bream he had lost 5 and a barbel (must of been gutted) but then in the last 30 minutes he had 6 more bream. Also a special mention for Shaun Bryan who won the national last year, he won his section this time thanks to landing a 9lb carp on a worm rig. Well done Shaun.
After a long day I got home at 9pm, then had to sort out a bit of gear for the following day fishing the pairs match at Newbridge.
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