Kennet and Avon Teams of 4 Rd 3, 20/05/2012

I was in charge of the team draw for Browning Andover A today and I managed a half decent job of it, I even managed to put myself onto a half decent peg along the Station stretch, I was on the left hand edge of the ‘Perch Tree’ and it looked nice.

Having had a few matches where confusing things had gone horribly wrong for me I decided on a 2 prong attack, the first line would be squatt at around 3feet deep straight in front of my peg and the second line would be worm and caster towards tree at 13-14.5m.

I set up 2 squatt rigs on no.2 elastic and 0.09mm mainline to 0.06mm bottoms with 22 B590 hooks, these were a 0.2g Classic 2 and a 4X7 Mick Bassett on the drop both shotted with strung no.13’s. I set up a heavy worm rig for tight across just behind the trees branches and light worm rig to fish the 3ft line along the front of the tree. At the all in I fed 4 balls of groundbait and half a cup of loose on the squatt line and about 20 dendrabenas over both worm lines with a few casters with the idea being to attract but not feed the fish on those lines. I shipped out my slightly more positive squatt rig and picked up fish straight away with a number of roach and a spattering of palm sized skimmers mixed in until the first hour was up and the skimmers disappeared. I tried the worm lines for the first time with only a couple of hollow perch to show I refed both lines. Back on the groundbait line and I was taking roach nearly one a put in but at around 15-20pp I was going nowhere fast so I topped up and went under the tree again. This saw the float on the heavy rig dip as I was twitching it and I skull dragged a foul hooked pound perch out from under the tree. I re fed and moved on the front of the tree line but the float would not settle, so I gave it a lift for 10 ft of elastic to shot under the tree very quickly, then the rig came back with no indications of a fish. I think I had just put my rig over the back of one of the large carp that live along that stretch.

Unperturbed I got my head down on the roach for the remainder of the match and caught steadily until the end. The scales started from my end and 8lb came from my right (squatt fish and 3 big perch from under the tree), I had 6lb 4oz, then 4lb 4oz then the skimmers started with a 9lb, 14lb then the last 3 pegs had two 7lb weights and 24lb!!

Skimmers had been the key so if I drew there again I knew that I would have to figure out how to catch them and not concentrate on the roach as they were not big enough to compete.

I was still a really good days fishing and the A team managed 2^nd overall on the day.