AAF Gp2 Match 4, Chippenham

Again for this match it was a very early start with me picking Pez up at 0445 for the hour and a half drive up to Chippenham, we decided that because we only needed 33 pegs that we would spread the pegging out a bit more this time, this saw us having less pegs to lay over a much larger area. A section ran along riverside Drive down to the beginning of the shallows, B section was basically the line of trees all the way down to the dead stretch and finally C section ran from the blue bridge into Monkton Park. There was plenty of room for everyone and I fancied a few pegs A5, A6, A8, B1, B8, B11, C1 , C7, C9-11 for a decent weight and the golden peg was not safe on B10 either as that has form with a small out flow and a bush opposite. Just before the draw I had some news from my mum that started with “Don’t panic but I’m in hospital!!”, if you have ever had one of those phone calls you will know that the first thing you do is panic. She had broken her hip on Monday and I was finding out on Wednesday!! Nice. She was safe and sound however, and there was nothing that I could do so I agreed to let the family know and arranged to see her that night.

The draw went well with Tommy (the drawbag) pulling out a decent team draw, with himself on A5, me on B10 (the golden peg) and Pez on C6. This left us in high hopes of a good day and I dropped Pez off at Monkton Park before finding some off road parking in the housing estate near my peg. I loaded up my barrow and found B10:

As usual I had a general plan that would focus around a pole line and a waggler line; I set up a bolo rod with a small bomb tied under a stick float and plumbed around the swim to get an idea of the contours. I was happy with a steady 6-7ft down the middle and it got shallower by about a foot across the far side and under a small bush that pushed over the water by a meter or so. Due to the depth, colour and flow I decided to discount bread on the pole line in preference for a mix of 30% River, 30% Browning Canal, 20% Browning Etang and 20% brown crumb. This was darkened off with some black power dye wetted and left to settle whilst I set up the platform, box and top kits. Due to a lack of time before the all in I decided to set the waggler up first, this was on my 14ft Xitan Waggler rod with a 030 Black Magic reel loaded with 0.14mm slow sinking reel line. A 4SSG loaded waggler was attached to the line with 3 no.8’s spread down the line towards the 0.10mm bottom that ended in a size 20 wide gape match. I then had enough time to set up 1 pole rig so I decided that a 1.5g carbo on 0.12 mainline and a 0.08mm bottom with a size 20 B511 should fit the bill as when it towed it would be heavy enough to still control bbut not too heavy for when the weir was backing up, elastic was no.5 Cenex through the no. 2 and 3 sections of my Z9.

I balled in 10 Jaffas of groundbait containing 50ml Hemp, 50ml Caster and 50ml deadened pinkies at the all in on the 11.5m line and then catapulted out 6 pouches of hemp against the far bank bush before settling into a routine of feeding 10 maggots every couple of minutes over that line. I was expecting some quick action due to balling in but after an hour of not alot happening, a change to the wag saw the float dip and fish no.1, a chublet, came to the waiting net. A swap back to the pole saw a quick run of small dace then a chublet, back to the wag when it got quite saw another quick flurry of fish and so the pattern continued through the match. I found that a quick run of fish would see them back off so the pole line would get a ball of bait and left whereas the wag line would just get left alone for a while. This worked well and I steadily put fish in the net including a few small chub on the wag and 3 roach for nearly a pound in the last 20 minutes from on the pole line.

At the all out it transpired that the river had fished really hard in A section with only a few fish getting caught, the same fate had be fallen most of B section and finally C section had seen the fewest dry nets and a few big perch came in from the same peg that won the match before Christmas. My net of fish went 3.780kg and was enough for 2^nd in section behind a 3.86kg weight consisting of 2 bream! The rest of the team had equally good results, Tommy had snagged a small chub in the dying moments of the match to get 2^nd in A section (1 of 3 fish caught), Pez had a net of perch from the peg next to the winner again for a second in section giving 11Sigs a points total of 6 and first on the day by a 7 point margin.