AT WL round 4 Bristol Avon,

My drive to Melksham in the morning was full of trepidation for this match as the river had been carrying extra water all week and it had been raining again overnight. I was unsure whether or not the match would be going ahead so I had also packed some big wagglers and whopper droppers so that I would have been able to spend a few hours at Shearwater wasting bait if needs be. Talk at the draw was of how high the water was and how fast, It had been deemed safe by the peggers, but they had moved a section from Melksham to Chippenham due to the Forest section being unfishable.  We all respected a 2 minute silence before the draw and then the good stuff as Barry and Dave went up to conduct the draw, It was an alright draw with number 5 being where we would be sat for the day, I was on K5 which as it turned out was around 500m from the draw venue as the crow flies. After a 2 minute drive, a 10 minute walk (I used the wrong car park!) and then another 10 minutes trying to find the peg number I was at my peg.

As you can see it didn't look too bad and I thought that with the speed of the flow and depth of water that I know is in that area that a simple match would be best, I set up a feeder rod to fish across with bread for the opening 20 minutes, a 3m whip to fish down the inside in a small slack, a flat float for 6m out just into the flow and a waggler to chuck to the far side looking for chublet and bleak if it was hard.  I mixed 4kg of groundbait and then started to check that my kit would be right for the job, it was at this point that I discovered that my 3g Flat float was woefully inadequate so I put on the biggest one I had (8g) and over shotted it by quite a bit. This was a little better and I thought that I may be able to present for a short period over the top of a baited patch so the plan stayed the same.

At the all in I potted 12 balls of groundbait onto the 6m line full of chopped worm, caster and dead pinkie (i was hoping to snag a bream on this line), a small nugget of groundbait and a few pinkies went in on the whip line and then I cast the feeder full of bread over to the far side. This time the feeder did not work and after 20 minutes I went on to the whip, this proved to be a good idea with 6 Roach and 4 Perch coming to the bank in the next 40 minutes, but the swim was slowing drastically.

I decided to rest it by having a look on the flatty and I discovered that the float was still too light and in order to be able to get the bait down I had to slowly trot the rig over the area, 5 minutes was enough to convince me that that was a no go for the day so I started casting the feeder onto the pole line. This allowed me to present a static bait at least but there were still no indications at that point. I started top rotate the swims and found that I would get a quick bite on the whip and then nothing until it had been rested for a length of time. By doing this coming into the last hour I was up to 14 fish, I was on the feeder at this point and out of the blue I missed a quick bite, I tried one more chuck in that stint to no avail, rotated the swims again and managed a small perch from the whip line then twenty minute from the end and without seeing a bite I lifted into my biggest fish of the day on the tip, a roach of about 5-6oz, and then before you knew it the all out was called. We were on scales so I got to see how the section had fished, hard is the answer with the top 2 pegs being 1&2 and both having to go for the bleak in front of them for over 4lb. There was an invisible barrier between them and the last 4 pegs as we had no bleak to show for it, I managed 2lb 5oz for third, then there was another low 2lb and the bottom 2 both had ounces.

The team on the day was 4th which keeps in 4th overall, a point behind Swindon Talisman, the goal posts have changed and we are after being best of the rest behind Garbolino Blackmore Vale and Daiwa Gordon League.

Jefferies Cup 2013

It was off to march for the annual Jefferies Cup competition, I was picked up by Chri Glover at 0330 and off we trundled, we made good time and even with a quick stop off to refuel we arrived in plenty of time. Plenty of banter was had at the draw venue and it was soon to business, Jon Hatch was B team captain for the day and he returned to Bri, Daz and myself peg 2, I got A section as I was car sharing with gloves so off we went.
Parking was simple, and we soon found our pegs, Gloves was on 12, which was in a far better area but we went a quid any way. It was made worst when the REF angler to my left who had helped to peg it in the morning and had been told that we were in the worst end of the section.

 On the whole the peg looked alright, but I had a small problem as I had only packed rigs for a proper river, the swim was 4 ft down the middle and my lightest rig was 0.75g, I set this and a 1.5g up in case it towed a bit, both Dino Premiers on 0.12mm main line and a 0.08mm bottom to a size 20 hook. I decided to fish ground bait down the middle so I mixed 3Kg of bait and then looked down the peg for a worm line next to the cabbages on the inside. This rig was 0.18-0.14  and a size 14 hook, under a 0.7g slim float. Finally I plumbed up across and tight to the boat, it was a little shallow so I pulled back half a section and put on a bread line with the same line and hooks as the ground bait line, but a smaller 0.6g float.
At the all in (that was 15 minutes earlier than I was expecting) I fed 3 balls of ground bait with squatt, pinkie and hemp in at 10M, then I potted a small ball of licky across with half a pot of hemp.  I went straight on to the ground bait line and started to catch straight away nothing massive but it was a fish a put in, I found that by chopping and changing hook baits as well as the depth I was able to string a few better fish together from time to time. About an hour in I fed the worm line with 4 lobs finely chopped through a bait dropper, and 10 minutes later I was pulling out 4 perch to 6 oz for nearly a pound in short order.
At about half one what flow there had been disappeared and I was left with rigs too heavy to really catch but by chopping and changing around all three swims and hook baits and depths I was able to keep fish going in the net. The afternoon was miserable with trashed rigs, rain and swans causing havoc so when the all out was called I was quite happy to finish.
To cut a long story short I had 6lb 15 1/2oz for 9th in section, I got beaten on both sides (by 1 1/2oz to my left) but I managed to get a quid off Gloves. Army A managed 4th but we were well down the running. Always next year.

Shearwater tackle test

I have been waiting to try out my new Browning Black Viper feeder rods for a few weeks and finally the opportunity arose, Tony and myself got to the lake at around 8 o’clock and decided to fish off the woodland bank about halfway along where I judged the depth should be around 10 feet deep.

My tackle for the day was simple, a 14ft Black Viper feeder and Black magic reel for fishing in the middle of the lake at 60+ turns and an 11ft Black Viper rod with an Ultimatch attached.

My groundbait was a 50:50 method mix and micro pellet that I prepared the night before and as soon as the platform was in the margins I was fishing.

I started the session on a 45g Guru elasticated method feeder with a 10cm hooklength made of 0.20 Cenex line to a size 14 Guru QM1. My hookbaits were banded pellet, white Boilies and pepparami all mounted on a baitband, the pepparami and Boilies have the band pulled inside the bait and the pellets were banded as normal around the pellet.

The day started quite slow and after about 30 minutes of casting every couple of minutes to the clip at 60 turns I decided to try dead maggots as hook bait. This resulted in a small skimmer, so as I was not blanking I decided to bin off the maggot as bream were not my target (Tony had other ideas).

I changed to a skinned piece of pepparami and this was the changing point of my session as I pulled into a carp and a couple of better skimmers in the 2-3lb class over the next hour or so. Then lifting into another bite I just hit solid resistance that I could tell instantly was a good fish, I got it halfway back before it decided that it would run past my line clip and then take another 15 minutes to land.

The Black viper performed admirably and the only time that My casting suffered was as a direct result of my not paying attention whilst casting.

Over the course of the day I extended out to 65 turns and regularly hit the clip well above the water so I think that with a bit more practice and getting used to the kit it wont be long until I am fishing at 80+ turns.

I finished the day on 10 Carp and 9 bream, Tony had 14 Bream and 3 Carp I think and so therefore won the Bream match. He was fishing a lot closer, at 40 turns and only managed to mug his carp out from down the edge on the method close to the end. All in all a very enjoyable day, and one to be repeated very soon.

Start of the great carp hunt.

The last couple of weeks have seen me mainly sorting carp gear out so that I could fish a winter ticket on a gravel pit just north of Swindon.  I have done a couple of trips to Todber Manor with mixed results.

Dusk over little Haynes

Little Haynes

A Wadmill Double

Wadmill in the rain

Wadmill again

 But the day was finally upon us that would see me in pursuit of Giant Carp again.  However, my first visit saw me failing to even see a carp, forget a lighter so I packed up, bought one and set up again and finally the weather tried its best to soak me whilst I was sleeping as the wind swung into my bivvy as I slept.

The point 

Car Park swim

The following day it was back to Todber again, this time on the paddock lake.  It has a good head of carp to just over 30lb and cats to 80lb so expectations were high as my brother and I had the whole lake booked. ( There were meant to be 6 of us).

We set up in pegs 2 and 3, I put John into 3 (the best peg on the lake) and proceeded to cast towards his swim with a pva bag . This rod gave me the only 2 bites that we had for the 24 hours and they resulted in two nice looking mid doubles.

A Paddock Double

The Saturday night saw wind and rain of biblical proportions and I thought that I was going to end in Kansas at any time. It was a good giggle and a nice reminder of how social fishing can be.

Paddock Peg 2