After the hour and a half drive from Blandford to Chippenham I walked into the Wetherspoons and suddenly faces started to come back to me. It had been nearly 2 years since my last match along this stretch of the Bristol Avon and was hoping that not too much had changed in my absence.
After the customary fried breakfast it was time to draw, I was about halfway down the draw queue and peg 42 stuck in my grubby little mit. A quick confer with a couple of the Chippenham club boys confirmed that I was in fact on a peg that I knew as the lifebuoy along Riverside Drive.
Upon arriving at the peg and having lumped my kit down to the waterside I decided to fish with my platform in the water. This gave me a new perspective on the swim which saw me sitting on the outside of a sweeping bend with a small overhang opposite and a stretch of slacker water on the inside of the bend with an obvious crease, there was also a long line of trees on my bank that extended downstream for about 50 yards. After looking at the swim for a few minutes I felt that it looked right for bread on a stick line just behind a boil about a rod length out and slightly downstream and then a waggler across on the edge of the faster water.
Both were set up on 14ft float rods with a 3AA straight waggler on 2.5lb mainline to a 0.10mm hooklength and a size 20 hook set just tripping bottom with 4 no. 8 shot spread down the line and a micro swivel connecting my mainline to my hooklength on one and a 4 no. 4 stick on 2lb main line to a 0.09mm bottom and a size 20 hook again with spread no.8's down the line on the stick. I had a little time left before the all in, so, pulled my Bolo rod out of the bag as it is always set up with no shot on and decided to have a good plumb around the swim.
Suddenly I found a problem as the floods obviously had not removed all of the summers weed and there were strands of the stuff all over the swim. Bearing in mind the fact that one of the best ways to approach the swim in the summer is to find a hole in the weed and then either ball in groundbait or dropper in chopped worm and caster for the Bream and Tench that live in the area I was starting to spot a problem. Even depth all down the swim however persuaded me to try and see if my tactics would work so I waited for the whistle.
On the whistle I underarmed out a ball of 50/50 liquidised bread and punch crumb about the size of a Satsuma then fed 8 half pouches of hemp on my waggler line followed by 15-20 maggots every run through. On went a 5mm bread punch and I started trotting the stick down the inside, it travelled a yard before it dragged under on a bit of weed, next run missed the first bit of weed found another. This continued for about 30 minutes and the only way to get a trot anywhere down the swim was to shallow up by a foot, however, then the float didn't go under at all and alarm bells started ringing.
Starting to fear the worst as all I could see was the guy on peg 44 catching Chublet at the rate of one a put in I tried the waggler early, it took three trots before it popped under halfway down the swim before Chub no1 was on its way to the net, at about 6-8oz it was a good start and I hoped it would continue for the rest of the match and I would complete an awesome turnaround. It was not to be at the end of 5 hours I had 6 Chub to 8oz , a Roach and a small Dace one of the Chub and the roach came on the stick when I tried trotting that down the far bank run in order to slow the bait down and one of the chub came at nearly half depth.
I ended up weighing in 3lb 12oz ish for around about the lowest weight of the day and had watched (Robin Guy i believe) winning the match from peg 44 with 16lb of Chub and Roach on bread on the pole and stick/topper.
Next time I think I would have set up a pole and groundbait to start the match on and I would have fed my waggler swim further downstream to take full advantage of the tree line that held fish, I know this as they were topping about 30 yards downstream in the later stages of the match.
Ah well always next year.
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