Jefferies Cup, River Nene

This was my first visit to the Nene and I had been looking forward to it for a couple of weeks, rigs and hooklengths were tied ready and the rest of my kit was well prepped. I drew a peg about 3 pegs upstream of a small footbridge, an area that I was told would normally be run to by the guys fishing, ‘Normally?’ I replied, and soon found out why.

It was 13m wide and around 4 feet deep so perfect for a bit of bread fishing, especially since the river was so clear, I set up a 0.75g Drennan carbo on 0.12mm Cenex mainline and a 0.08mm bottom of the same material, with a 20 B511, all set on a top 4 rig with no.5 Cenex elastic through 3 sections. I also set up a strung styl hemp rig and a worm rig but enough about them as neither produced a bite. At the all in I fed a small ball of licky bread at 5m in front of me and 4 balls of groundbait at 11m downstream at 2 o’clock, before shipping out a 4mm punch onto my 5m line.
Basically nothing happened, I re-fed with ting nuggets of bread to try and attract the roach onto that line but it did not work, started a worm line but nothing on that and I had no indications on my groundbait line. The RAF angler to my right had caught about a dozen roach in the first 2 hours so I needed to catch something to save face and I got off my box and ‘adapted’ a hemp rig into a light bread rig. 0.10mm mainline, 0.07mm Cenex bottom with a 20 B511 all set on no.3 Cenex elastic. The float was a slim 0.2g pattern with a hollow bristle and I plumbed this up on a line under the tree in front of me at about 10m fed a tiny pinch of loose licky (as there was next to no flow) then went over the top with a 4mm punch. I had an almost instant response but missed my first couple of bites but a change to a 3mm punch sorted that out and I was soon putting skimmers into the net. Not bad I thought but the skimmers were around 20-25 to the pound with the odd slighty better roach thrown in for good measure, I found that you could not take too many fish from the line on the bounce as they would back off. I nurtured the swim as much as possible and at the end of the match I had done a good job of trying to catch up and thought I had possibly 2kg in the net, the scales however, told a different tale and the fish were alot smaller than I had thought (plus I did not count them) and I ended up with 2lb 6oz. This was enough for 5th in a 15peg section but I was not impressed with my first visit to the river, the section was won with a joint weight of 3lb 1.5oz so all I needed was another line perhaps that I could have caught on and it would have been enough.


Lessons learnt were to stick to my guns! I saw that the river was tap water clear and thought hat bread would be the way but still fed a groundbait line!! And, never give in as the last hour was the best as the light started to fade.