This was my first match for my new team Browning Andover Match Group and I had been looking forward to it for a while, all my prep had been done and I was confident of my approach. The team met at the draw and discussed the plan over a breakfast of sorts and before we knew it the draw was taking place. Barry went up and did the honours and out of the 10 pegs in our envelope I was off to permanent peg 78 at Woolavington Bridge.
When I arrived at my swim the tactics for the day were obvious as I had the downstream end peg of the section, I set up a feeder on 6lb braid with a 0.10mm bottom and 16 Drennan Wide Gape match and a medium feeder for fishing at 54 turns (easy when it isn’t windy). A long pole line at 13m just as the slope eased off had a 0.8g DS14 and a 4X14 Tubertini Stix get set up both on 0.11 main to 0.07 and 22 B511’s. These were both rigged on no.5 elastic through 3 sections and the depth was only about 4 ½ feet so expectations were high for that line, finally I set up a worm rig on 0.17-0.15mm line and a 14 Drennan Wide Gape to fish in the eel grass to the right over maggot and next to the reeds on my left with worm and caster.
The all in saw me cast a SPOMB out to the feeder line 8 times containing my Bream groundbait (Super Bremes and brown crumb 50/50) with worm, caster and dead pinkies in the mix. I then cupped 6 balls of Roach groundbait (Super Match, Roach and brown crumb) this again contained hemp, caster and dead pinkies. Finally a cup of worm and caster went next to the reeds and a cup of dead reds went into the eel grass.
I shipped out my DS14 rig with a pinkie on and caught a small roach first put in, then another and after 30 mins I had 8 fish in the net including a 4oz skimmer. All was well until I asked the guy in the next peg how he was doing and he admitted to 3 skimmers, this was enough for me to chuck the tip and again the response was pretty much instant with small roach and perch succumbing to dead maggot. It took a further hour of taking a couple of fish on the tip then swapping to the pole for a couple, the fish on the tip were a bit bigger but the pole saw them coming in almost every put in. Finally the tip went round and I was attached to a proper skimmer and this swayed me to keep going on these two lines till the end, I had a couple of looks on the choppy and maggot lines but only had 2 indications from the choppy line.
At the end of the match I had 2 bream and a smattering of bits for a respectable 3.650Kg, however, this was only good enough for second in section as the Thatchers lad in my section had smashed out 10kg+ of skimmers mostly in the last hour from a far bank feeder line. My result helped the team to 5th on the day and gave me a default section win and more importantly I learnt loads about how to approach the river again next time.
1: do not cast further than your rod can do easily, the wind can change in an instant
2: try to keep your worm line towards the deeper edge of the reeds if the wind will let you.
3: playing bream on braid can be fun!!
Take a rod that is capable of reaching two thirds in wind on the huntspill and start on the feeder because you're just as likely to catch bream in the first few casts as any.
ReplyDeleteWhat rod do you recommend please Zac? I was using a DRX 11'10" River Feeder and a 3/4 ounce tip to start at 54 turns. It was only as I was trying to cast too hard that problems arose.
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