AT WL Rd 6, Bristol Avon, Melksham

The meet for the match was at the spencer club and Barry drew the team peg 5 and put me on G section, this was along the forest stretch in Melksham so I did not have far to travel at all. On getting to my peg I was directly upstream of a busy footbridge, and I was reliably informed that the last match had seen the section winner on my peg. I looked at the water and decided to fish a bread line on the pole, a stick under the bridge and I would also set up a tip rod if it was hard.

I set up 2 pole rigs both Drennan Carbo floats on 0.12mm to 0.08mm Cenex line and 20 B511’s with No.5 elastic through both top kits. One float was 0.75g shotted with no. 8’s as a bulk the other had an Olivetti and required 1.5g. I then set up an 8 no.6 to trot under the bridge down the inside with caster and also a tip rod that was 0.20 slow sinking match line straight through to a size 10 Carbon feeder hook, this I had set up as a link ledger with 2 swan shot.

At the all in I fed a small ball of licky onto the pole line and went over the top with the gram and a half rig, I did not have a touch even after changing to the lighter rig, changing depth and lightening the hooklength. I chucked the tip under the bridge with half a lobworm looking for a chub, tried the stick for 30 minutes and up until the last 15 mins all I had to show was a small perch that I had mugged of the end of my keepnet when it swam past. I also caught 2 roach on bread that I had continued to feed religiously for the duration of the day from on the bread line in the last 15 mins but that was it.

I finished with 7oz; this was enough for 5^th out of 7 anglers in my section and the results for the day saw that the team, even with 2 section winners and a section second had not done well and we were 6^th on the day and 5^th in the league.