AT Upper Thames WL, Rd 2 K&A Canal, 16/10/2011

As you can see from the picture I was the first recipient of the ‘infamous’ Pink Flamingo, this was for an indiscretion earlier in the year but I digress, back to the fishing. At the draw Barry came out with G4, this put me around the area that I had been on last week and the speculation around the team was that it was the peg that won it last match. On walking along the section I finally found my peg, 2 along from where I wanted and in front of next to no cover and the same problems with the lack of depth over to look forward to. As I thought that I would be off the fish so to speak it made my mind up for me that I would be concentrating on small fish for the day, I plumbed the same bread rig as last week at 4ft deep and then set up a deck squatt and an on the drop squatt rig both plumbed up at 13m in around 2ft of water. My reason for this was simple, hopefully the boats would not go that far over to get around the corner, sound in theory but only time would tell.

My squatt rigs were 0.1mm Cenex to 0.07mm Cenex and 22 B590 hooks on no.2 or 3 elastic, the deck rig was a 0.3g Classic 6 and the OTD was a 0.1g Browning slim. I also set up a worm rig and a shallow bread rig but I hoped that I would not need to use either. On the all in I cupped in a small ball of licky at 5m and 2 balls of groundbait with some loose squatt at 13m and I started on a 5mm punch on the short bread line. Same as last week it did not take long for my first fish and I soon had around 20 in the net, but then the first boat of the day came through and coloured the water up stopping the action almost immediately. I fed my worm line and then started to work the long line but it was hard work in the shallow water and we were not helped by the number of boats that were taking full advantage of the Indian summer. The 2 pegs to my left were easily running away with the section as they both had skimmers in the bag by the half way stage but I was steadily catching fish at around 20 to the pound so the weight was steadily growing. I had a couple of looks on my worm line and also across at 14.5m in the shallow water with bread but my best line was the 13m groundbait line. I finished with over 75 fish for 3lb 15oz and a 4^th in section so it was as expected. The team managed a 4^th on the day with some good results and some not so good ones but the best news for me was that the Flamingo found a new home.