This was the final round of the four and was being held over 4 sections that we had fished before, after breakfast I did the draw and managed to pull myself out an end peg along a stretch known as the beeches. Unfortunately that was it for the good pegs and the rest for the team were less that desirable and stuck in the middle of the section. I got the low down off my team captain and was told that my peg had won every match from the winter league with over 20lb of skimmers and Tench, so I nearly ran there!!
I had a lock 40 yards to my left and an outflow stream from the lock about 5 yds to my left on the far bank that was feeding into the canal, I had an overhanging tree just down to my right and a bunch of brambles straight out across. So with plenty of places to go I decided to get my box into the shallows and set up in the water, I plumbed up the normal 4ft bread line at an angle of 45ᵒ to my left, a squatt line at 10m straight out in front and I plumbed up a worm line next to the tree to my right. The rigs were my usual ones and all I had changed was the elastic on my worm rig was No8 Vespe so that I might have more control over the fish I was hoping to get on it.
At the all in I fed a Satsuma ball of licky and some loose bread on my 5m line, 20 worms and about the same of caster on my 14.5m line, then 4 balls of groundbait with dead squatt at 10m for my Roach line. I shipped out on my bread line and waited, 6 mins later I had roach no.1 in the net and then a few more followed but I was never setting the world on fire and after 45mins I tried my worm line as the bread line had dried up. I counted to 100 and had no indications so dropped back in on the bread line only to be disappointed and have to go out on the squatt line. This gave a quick run of fish but they then became thin on the ground and it became a case of nicking a few fish from the squatt line then finding a way to rest it for a couple of minutes before trying to get a few more fish. I had taken a few small skimmers from the squatt line but due to being so close to the lock and it being a bank holiday saw a number of boats using reverse to brake in my swim so it was difficult to get any real numbers of fish to come in steadily. After a particularly bad run of boats I set up a rat hole punch rig and fished it at 13m across towards the bramble, this gave me a quick run of 6 bread fish for about 12oz but then it became hard again as the lock was opened and all my bait was spread about 40yds downstream.
I thought at the end that I had 4-5lb of fish as I had nearly 50 fish, I was very frustrated that my swim (a known flyer) had fished so poorly and could only wonder if it was due to the unusual high number of boats today, every time one came through the water level would fluctuate over a 6 inch range and at times the tow was so strong I thought I needed a feeder rod and 4oz of lead to hold bottom. However, the whole section had fished hard and my weight of 5lb 10oz was enough to beat all but the last 2 pegs at the far end of the section that had 6lb 13oz and 8 1/2lb respectively.
On returning to match HQ all was not well as we had had a couple of decent results and a couple of blowouts that saw us come in 10th on the day, this saw us finish 10th overall in the league. On a more personal note I did pick up the pools for my half section so it wasn’t that bad a day after all. It is back to commercials for a fortnight till the rivers open yippee, now did I wash my meat cutter??
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