I decided to go to the Avon for a quick practice and to
try a few things before the match on Sunday; I pegged myself on the dead
stretch two pegs above the blue footbridge (not too far from the parking), but
I had no idea as to how to approach the river.
As you can see there had been a small frost and on my
journey up to the river the thermometer had not gone above -5 degrees C, not a good
sign. But there was a tinge of colour and the water was moving quite fast so I
decided to fish a ground bait line down the middle of the river, worm down the
inside reeds and a waggler line across. I mixed the ground bait and before
setting up the pole I chucked out a licky bread feeder to the far side to see
what would happen, the answer was that I would catch 2 chub for a total of
around 3lb in the first 10 minutes whilst trying to set up pole rigs. The
hooklength was 0.12 and a size 14 B560 with a 7.5mm punch of bread and a small
wire cage feeder, cast and wait, easy.
After the initial flurry I decided that I had better
start feeding the far side so I started to introduce some maggot only around
10-12 every run through and then I balled in 8 jaffas with no feed and cupped
in 4 smaller balls with a mix of caster, hemp and dead pinkie in them. This was
all on the 13m line and I then droppered in some worm and caster down the
inside hoping for a perch.
Starting on the long pole and a single maggot the flow
was proving to be troublesome even with a 2g float so I decided to set up a
bolo rod with a 3g float, the difference was instant with runs of small dace
and roach from further down the swim than I could reach with the pole rig. When
the flow was not as strong and especially straight after topping up the pole
was still better as the fish seemed to be higher up the swim and I would get a
bite most runs through a couple of inches off the deck. The water level was
fluctuating alot though as usual for down this stretch and staying in touch
with the fish was tricky.
I tried the worm line a number of times throughout the
day but did not get a bite, I do not believe that it should be written off but in future I will
fish it at the base of the near shelf, possibly feeding the worm in soil or
leam and fishing a flat float over the top.
The waggler line was the weight building line of the day
with numbers of better roach, dace and a few small chub succumbing to double
maggot either just tripping bottom or on the drop. I was using my 13ft CC superlight match with a Black magic 30 reel loaded with 4lb Cenex sinking mainline, the best float was a browning 3AA straight waggler with a 0.10 hooklength to a size 20 Carbon Match hook. Come match day I would have
2 rigs to fish this line a straight unloaded for dragging and a thin straight
or insert for OTD or tripping through. A top and bottom float may also be an
idea but I noticed that I would catch the odd chub and there was no way of
keeping them coming in the clear water, I tried upping the feed when it looked
like being a good day but this just killed off everything so I reigned my
feeding back in and managed to catch the odd fish until the end. I finished
with double figures and a whole host of ideas to make the day on Sunday better;
I also chucked the licky feeder out at the end as I was packing up and managed
a couple of decent roach so that’s the get me out of jail tactic sorted. It is raining between now and then so it
should be 3g rigs, flattys and lobworms on the Bomb.
No comments:
Post a Comment