AAF Gp2 Match 5, K&A canal, Bishops Cannings.

Firstly sorry for the delay in getting this out but here it is, once again I was pegging this match, something to do with the venue being 6 minutes from my house at the moment, so it was a late night drive from London to Devizes followed by an early start to get the stretch sorted for the day.  My only brief was make sure everyone had plenty of room so I will be honest I spent more time pacing than I did looking at the far bank for nice swims. Even so we were well spread out with a section either side of the swing bridge and a section towards Devizes from the Bridge inn.

I got the pegging done in record time and managed to have my breakfast relatively un disturbed I collected my bait and enjoyed a bit of banter before getting called forward to draw for the team. The draw put Ben on A6 (not the worst), Daz on B11 (reasonable) and myself on C5, this was an unknown stretch as I had never fished it and to make matters worse two pegs to my right I had Kev (ex Army team captain and current member), then Dave (Ex Army Team Captain) and on my left Mick (Army team member). We all went a quid with each other and within minutes I had the first complaint about the pegging, Ok I didn’t know that there was a water point in front of C3, but Kev did and he soon pointed it out as the first boat of the day parked up.  Then Dave pointed out that he was sat in the middle of a boat and couldn’t easily reach the end, then Mick walked past suffering from the night before to see his mate in the next section. My peg looked alright though:

Apart from all the scum and rubbish that was floating around and getting pushed about by the wind it looked alright, I plumbed up a short bread line and then two rigs to fish in the gap across, one with pellet the other with worm, finally I set up a rig to fish groundbait against the left hand boat.

I was ready well before the start but was not too confident as the canal was a funny colour so I was hoping for a couple of big bonus fish hence the pellets going in at the all in.  I fed a small ball of bread at 2+1, 3 balls of groundbait on my 11.5m groundbait line and then 10 worms against the left boat and a few 2 and 4mm pellet against the right boat.

I dropped my standard 0.6g bread rig in  close and started to wait, fortunately it didn’t take too long and within the first hour I had 20 fish for about a kilo and a half, including a couple of chunky hybrids, I had also lost a hybrid of about a pound but I wasn’t’ geared up for them to be fair.  The second hour slowed considerably but at the end I had around 40 fish for 2 kilo, it was at this point that I had to start looking on the groundbait line as the bread line died, I had even started another line to the left down the tow but as it was running in the wrong direction I was not confident.

The groundbait line was slow with a roach and small perch to show, the pellet gave me nothing and the worm line was equally bad, I decided to start a new line against the right hand boat and fish bread.  It worked although it was slow, and in the last hour I also managed another chunky roach off the original bread line and two small perch on the worm line, I also bumped a skimmer on the groundbait line so that was the end of that line and the all out was a sound for sore ears.

Kev had managed a few fish in between the boats, Dave had had a struggle and Mick managed a pound skimmer and then went for a snooze in my van as he was well under the weather, As it turned out in our 4 way match I managed 2.78kg, Kev 1.83kg, Dave 0.91 and mick had 0.88 but a good snooze (so I won the quid off each of them). This was also enough for second in section for me and 4^th in the match, I was beaten by 3 bream weights, Dave Docs won my section and the match with 3.8kg including 10 skimmers so I was regretting the lost hybrid and also bumping the fish on my groundbait line.

The boys did good with Ben getting 6 points and Daz 3 so we ended up 2^nd on the day behind Nomads A but we have put 10 points between ourselves and Blandford and are nipping on the heels of Nomads above us in the league. It is all change onto commercials with the 4 Way Challenge coming up on Tunnel Barn Farm and the group matches moving to Todber and the like, I am also chasing big carp at the moment, my latest big carp exploits can be seen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hh-3QR8Y7uY.

What would I do different

1.       I would like to think that if I drew there again I would set up a second bread rig with a different type of float and a soft hollow elastic just for the skimmers and hybrids, rather than making do with my bagging roach rig.

2.       I would also bin off the pellet across and fish the groundbait lines between the boats and fish 2 worm lines down the track on each side.

3.       Forget Dendys it’s all about the lobs.