07/09/2014 Thames Open

It was off to the Swan Inn at Radcot for the Thames open and the start of the natural season for me, I picked John up at some ungodly hour, we had breakfast at Maccy D's and still managed to arrive in time for the draw. Looking around at the draw there were plenty of good anglers on this one so it was definitely going to be a learning experience, I stuck my hand in the draw bag and out popped Clansfield 92. As it transpired this was the second last downstream peg today and involved driving through 3 fields to get to, usually this would be a good thing but I had to drop John off at the other end of the match stretch, on the plus side I was parked behind my peg 30 minutes after the draw so I had a good run.

I used a bolo to plumb up and found all the depth was at 5-7m and then it gradually got  shallower up to about 3ft just before the far bank weed started off the far bank.  All the features near this swim are upstream of it, and apart from the slight weed it is featureless. 

With this in mind I set up a groundbait line at 11.5m, a worm line  at 5 sections and a waggler for across. I was faffing around for a while so was only just ready at the all-in and I fed 6 balls of groundbait containing Caster, Hemp and dead pinkie, I then cupped 20 worms on the inside line and started on the pole line.

I had 2 small dace on maggot so swapped to caster and had a quick run of small roach, these were quickly replaced by tiny dace, gudgeon and bleak so aftre 15 minutes I put in a small ball of feed rich groundbait to see if that would bring the roach back, whilst this settled I tried the inside line and had 3 small perch and 8 wasps for close to a pound all in 15 minutes, then the crays arrived, I refed half a bait dropper and went long to find micro fish and this was then the rest of my day.

I tried the waggler line and this saw me start to catch numbers of tiny chub but it was short lived a big barge went through my swim and killed it dead. I tried the whip but could not get enough numbers of fish to make it worthwhile.

The inside line was good for an odd wasp and I could catch tiny bleak and dace on the pole with pinkie , ffortunately had been feeding hemp on the pole line all day and managed two 2oz roach on hemp in the last 10 minutes, then the all out…. Thank God.

End peg to my left had 4lb 15oz, I managed 3lb 4oz with close to a hundred fish…. I spent too long trying to get better fish for any more weight. The guys weighing in both had 3lb 7oz so a couple more roach or another 30 mini fish would have seen more section points. I didn’t follow the scales as I had to pick John up but later found out that I was last in section.

What I would do different:

I only set up a 1g rig for the pole line, I would have set up a 0.5g float as well to give me more options.

I would have balled in at the start to try and attract more roach into the area.