With no fishing last weekend and no fishing for me next weekend I was really wanting to get out for day in this nice weather. Wasn’t really sure where to go, and expected to be pools fodder wherever lol. In the end I planned to go to Hillview at Tewkesbury, a place that is always given me a warm welcome and lots of fish. I booked on and the match was on the canals.
I got to the fishery in good time and grabbed some breakfast and paid my pools. I didn’t recognise anyone but all the other anglers were friendly, but there was one lad called Keith Bilder who I half recognised as he used to live in Bristol. He was fishing here for the first time for a long time just like me.
The lodges are looking very good, and later this year I will be staying in one for the annual fishing holiday (moved from Viaduct for a change).
I drew peg 93 which is on the back canal and in the shade of the big fir trees to start. A lad called Colin was on the end of the canal peg 96 and on 91 was a lad called Charlie. The pegs have got plastic platforms now and it’s only about 12m to reach the far bank. This would be a nice easy work out for my latest acquisition, a Preston Superium X95 pole 😊. It really is a beautiful pole.
Rigs today were a 4x14 for fishing a top set with meat with 0.13 to a 16 GPM. 4x12 for my margins and the far bank, I used a mixture of 0.13 to 16 GPM and 0.11 to 16 SFL.
I started the match fishing my top set with meat it was very slow but I managed 3 or 4 small carp before bites completely stopped. I was feeding maggots down to my RH margin but didn’t want to go there just yet, so went across to the far side feeding fishery micro pellets and soft pellet on the hook. I had a nice 45 minutes here catching the odd carp and F1, but liners were a problem from the carp swimming up down the far bank off bottom. Just as I thought I was going to have a nice time on this line it died, a tiny tench and ide signalling the carp had moved.
The meat line was still bite less so onto the RH margin with maggots. Plenty of bites from silvers, ide, perch and little tench. When I thinned them out I got one F1 but nothing else. Back across on pellet and another run of fish which didn’t last long. I seemed to be doing ok on my canal from what I could tell, but over on canal 3 the two anglers on 70 and 72 were catching well i thought.
Mid match was slow and it seemed to be the same for many, if I could get 1 or 2 fish from any line I was lucky. I decided to start feeding my LH margin at top set plus one with micro and meat just because the maggot didn’t seem to keep the fish in the swim. I kept trying short meat line but I couldn’t get a bite, doing something wrong maybe?
I spent the next two hours working the two margins and the LH meat and micro was getting better with carp up to 5lb. With just over 30 minutes left I had to put another net in, but had left it in the van, Colin lent me one which was good of him. However, the dreaded extra net syndrome hit me big time! My RH meat line went from nice clean bites to lots of liners and lost two foulers, maggot line dead. I had just one carp and one F1 in the last 30 minutes whilst Colin had at least 6 carp and Charlie had 4. Talk about gutted 🙈🙈🙈
It wasn’t long before Steve and Huggy arrived with the scales, Colin had 112lb which I knew I couldn’t beat, my silvers went 10lb and along with my carp I had 96lb. Clearly the last 30 minutes had cost me as Colin won our canal. Well done to John D who had 123lb all on meat (they call him the meat master) to be top weight. I had a chat with John after and he told me he used to fish for Seymo Aquarians who used to be a top river team. We mainly talked about our river experiences, what a great bloke.
Every canal needed a ton to get the section so it fished well.
I always thought it would be difficult for me to do well today but I was close, definitely enjoyed it and will go back. All the weights are on the board below.
No comments:
Post a Comment