Commercial House Round 3 Lower Bristol Avon

Last match on this part of the river in this league which is a shame in my opinion. After a busy work week I had not much time for prep as on Saturday it was a family wedding in Keynsham. Well it was a great wedding and plenty of booze, probably a bit too much 🤣.

I was really enjoying my sleep when the alarm went off at 7, but I was soon waking up and heading to Greggs for a couple of rolls. My pools were already paid so I had no rush, but was still in good time for the draw. Jerry Pocock was drawing and I hoped he would get me Swineford, but he drew that one himself. I was off to the crane again, but a short walk which was nice. My peg was just below the little wall, a parrot cage that was for sure, but last match there was 13lb caught on the little wall so I was happy with my peg in the section. However, there were two pegs in the lane that could be good.

A bit like last week there wasn’t much flow in close and with trees I thought I would go with bolo and waggler tactics again fished down the middle. I also set up a pole rig for fishing chop worm at 9 metres. The river was amazingly clear, and with the sun out I wondered if the fishing would be more difficult today.

I started on the bolo and again just loose fed hemp and caster and did not use gbait. First cast and I swung in a little dace and I was up and running. I was soon getting regular bites but I was missing lots of bites. I think it was dace as I had odd ones during the match. Most of my fish were coming to caster initially and I was soon shallowing up as the fish were coming up for the feed. I had a quick look on the worm for 3 small perch, had another 2 here later but that was it.

In the second hour the bites kept coming but the fish were on the small side, I had changed to maggot on the hook and also upped the feed. I tried the waggler and had bites on this and a couple of dace, but I couldn’t hit enough bites to warrant staying on it for now. I think going into the third hour I started to get the odd better roach, but they were just odd ones, then a pike grabbed one and bit me off. Over the next 10 minutes the pike tried three times to grab my fish but missed. The pike never showed again after this, but it did slow the fishing down.

Not long after this I heard some lads below chatting and laughing, I thought they were gonna go swimming, but then I heard the odd spadoosh like they were throwing big stones in. Eventually this had a detrimental effect on my peg and I was finding it hard to get bites. I decided to approach the lads and took a civil approach. Turns out they were throwing in big magnets on rope trying to find treasure lol. Thankfully they moved off below the match length, but my peg was never as good.

Another try on the waggler and more missed bites, so it was bolo all the way till 10 minutes to go when I caught a tree branch on a cast and bust the bolo rig. I deepened the waggler and caught two roach on it before the call out. I thought I had 12 to 13lb.

The scales came from peg 1 on the high wall where Sam Johnson had 8lb +, next lad had 4 1/2lb. My fish went 13lb 4oz which I was happy with though wish I could have hit more bites.  Down in the lane Sean O’Neill had 12lb and on the end peg Graham Hunt won the section with 14lb 1oz, so I ended second.

 

Back at the results news came in of a couple of outstanding weights, Jason Fearn at Newbridge about peg 28 had 38lb of chub up to 1 1/4lb on the waggler to win the match. At Swineford in the second field Warren Bates had 30lb of roach to come second, he caught on an 8m whip then on a waggler with roach up to 10oz. Section results and top overall weights are here. Although plenty of good weights again there were some areas where bites were hard to come by and a blank was recorded. To show how different it was Leigh Wakefield drew the peg I had last week. Now last week I had small fish boiling on the surface on the waggler and maggot, Leigh today had no small fish and had to fish for chub on the waggler and had some up to 4lb for 13lb 13oz. 

Right an early night needed now 😴 and no fishing next week. Next match in a couple of weeks at Chippenham.