Commercial House Winter League Round 1

I was asked by Jerry Pocock if I could fish with his team the Midland Spinner in this league. I’m able to fish four rounds as have to give my primary support to Thatchers team events. It’s always nice to fish the local river, but many other anglers also enjoy it travelling from far afield.

Have to mention the lovely day out Saturday watching the Gas win at home, cracking match, and was celebrated with a few ciders. It was an early kick off so a long time to celebrate 😆.

Sunday morning I picked up Jerry and we got to the draw at the Crown at Keynsham. Jerry had pegged the match and told me 2 sections were at Newbridge, 1 at Swineford and 3 at the Crane. Soon after a breakfast roll and a cup of tea Jerry drew and it seemed to be ok, especially for me on dolly peg 15 at Swineford 😊.  I’ve won on this peg on the pairs league this year with 18lb of chub and roach and was really happy. 

My view today. A bit of shade for a while but boy did it get hot later in the match 🥵.  Andy Reid from Lobby’s was above me and Bristol City fan Leigh Wakefield on end peg 17. Leigh’s peg had loads of chublets and chub swimming under the surface and I was not sure if I could get the better of him. Top bloke is Leigh, not all City fans are bad eggs 😉

Gear put up today, waggler, crowquill, pole rigs; 1.5g with 18 N20 to 0.10, 2g with 16 N20 to 0.11, a 4x14 with 18 N20 to 0.10 for fishing mid depth.

We started at 10:30 and I crashed in 10 balls of my usual Sonubaits Black Roach and Black River with a good helping of casters and hemp. I chucked the waggler looking for the early chub, but I hadn’t seen any and my peg was full of bits and dace. After 15 minutes I put that down and tried the pole at 13m where I fed, first run down on a caster and hooked a roach, but a jack pike grabbed it. Eventually the pike let go of the roach, I was not looking forward to hooking more pike! The next 15 minutes it was a bite a chuck, a couple of bleak a dace and small roach. I stuck a tare on the hook, I find these much easier to hook than hemp though can’t say I’ve had lots of days where you catch on tares. Well first drop in on the tare produced a roach, and so did the next one. I was getting a bite every chuck but missing too many, so I pushed the olivette up and spread the two droppers more. This made a difference and I hit more bites.

I was feeding a pouch of hemp one run through and then next I fed a pouch of maggots and casters across the river. Soon the roach were coming off bottom and I had to shallow up a foot. Bites were coming as soon as the rig settled if not before and i hardly had time to feed. I was soon needing to shallow up again but the rig felt too heavy for this depth so I tried the 4x14 rig. It worked but it felt like I was catching slower waiting for rig to settle, so I went back on the 1.5g and the roach just carried on gobbling up the tares!

An hour to go and I decided to stop feeding the waggler line as the small fish were still there. I had a little go on the crowquill to give my body a rest from shipping 13m of pole. I had 3 roach on this on tares and then missed bites so back to the pole. It proved that there were tons of roach in the peg bottom to middle.. solid!

When the match ended I was feeling the heat, the sun was burning my pole and landing net pole, but the roach carried on feeding. I was sure I had 20lb of roach, I had fed nearly 2 pints of hemp.

Swineford fished very well and I won the sectional with 24lb 7oz. Rich Whitmarsh had 16lb and then Leigh had a 14lb, Andy Reid 13lb that just beat Andy Britt 13lb, Mike Goodhind had double figures too!

It was a nightmare back at the pub as the sports ground opposite wouldn’t allow us to park in there, and there’s not much parking in the area as it’s all double yellows! Managed to get parked up and walked back, and was soon told that I had won the match as Sam Johnson was second best weight with 16lb 8oz from the Crane, then Rich Whitmarsh was third. Poor old Rich got beat up by pike so could have weighed a lot more, once again the pike stayed away from me after the first fish, that’s lucky!

Here’s part of my catch today, 18lb in this weigh.

Some very good river anglers were here today and you’ll see a few of them on the sheet below with section and overall. Great to win against these guys, another win for the Gas too 😆😆😆

Here’s the team positions after round 1 and pleased to see our team win today. The team was Jerry, me, Derek Coles, Shane Caswell, Craig Pinker and Jeff Surmon. Local lads who just love fishing the river.

A weekend off now, then the last round of the pairs league, one more good draw please, or is that greedy 😉😆