This round was held along the Seend Park and Bowerhill stretch of the K&A around Melksham, with 60+ anglers booked in it would be a good day and a good indicator for the actual round next week. Breakfast was in the form of a bacon roll and a coffee at the draw and a good old chat was had with the rest of the team around tactics. I drew peg 63 and this was 4 from the end peg at the good end, just off the bream pegs. I thought I would be in for a good day and after negotiating the stile at the end of the field it was a short 5 minute stroll to my peg. I had a bramble dangling in on the far bank so thought that this would be a good place to start however, when I pulled my pole out of my bag I discovered that whilst I had been practicing on the Dorset Stour earlier in the week A Cow that I had thought missed my pole bag actually hadn’t!! I had an 8 inch crack along the 14.5m pole section that was straight through to the inside of the section and on inspecting the rest of the pole there was a lesser one on the 13m section aswell. This was a disaster as I now had only 11.5m of pole that I could happily use until I could get it checked out, this on top of the fact that I was supposed to be getting my Squatt of John from his local shop and he had turned up with ½ and ½ squatt and sawdust, I had let him sort it out.
So my plan was set for me, bread short, bread long worm down the track and pinkie on the wag if it was going to be one of those days. I set up a 0.6 DC14H on 0.12 Cenex with a 0.08mm bottom and a size 20 B511; this was balanced with No.5 elastic through 3 sections and plumbed up at 5 sections out. My next rig was a 4X12 KC Karpa F1, again on the same line as the first rig but this time it was plumbed up at 11.5m so I set it on No.3 elastic to try and stop any fish I hooked from splashing too much. My worm rig consisted of a 0,5g Frenzee FP500 float on 0.14mm Cenex Line with a 0.12mm bottom and a size 16 Drennan Wide Gape Match hook, this was set on pink Reflex Hollow Elastic and was plumbed up down the track to my left and right. I did not set the waggler up at the start as I did not want it to distract me from the job at hand but it was already set up in a ready rod bag behind my peg.
At the all in I fed a Satsuma of Bread on my 5m line and started over the top of it straight away, this line was solid after only 5 minutes and after 30 minutes I had 30 fish in the net including a net skimmer, the size of fish had reduced drastically and the guy in the peg to my right was losing skimmers so I decided to reefed the inside and start a worm line. This had a negative effect on the inside line and even the small fish became hard to catch, boats suddenly became a problem with numbers of them chugging straight over the top of my worm line and the lock action moving whatever bait I had put in around loads. So I had a quick look on the worm and then fed my far bank bread line, no sooner as I had put the feed in but I had three boats line up for the bend to my right and this put all of them over my bread line in less than 3 feet of water!! And so the pattern was set with the boats and locks wiping out any feed I put in so I got off my box and put up my waggler rod.
I started loose feeding pinkies across towards the branch and proceeded to trot the float through the swim, it gave me a few fish but nowhere near enough to be competitive, so after an hour or so (plus losing my rig and teddy in the far bank) I added a half extension to my 11m section and re plumbed and fished bread on this new line.
It was solid with roach of 20- 25 to the pound but I was able to get a fish a put in and I stayed on this to the end. At the all out I had caught around 70 fish only 2 had seen the net so I would have been happy with 3 ½ - 4lb, the boats had been a nightmare as was not having enough pole, I would have gone across another section to get away from them if I could and I think this would have been worth another pound, I had 4lb 6oz and this was enough for 4th in my section of 6. The pegs to my right all beat me with a 9lb, 22lb and 6lb respectively, both the pegs to my left had small 4lb weights so I think I was at the end of the skimmers. As a team we learnt alot, saw some fish and worked out a loose plan for next week so we shall have to wait and see.
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