Avoiding the Blank 20 part 6 (The Hampshire Avon and Dorset Stour)

Avoiding the Blank 20 Part 5 (Salisbury and District AC Lakes and the Ha...

Avoiding the Blank 20 Part 4 (SADAC, WADAC lakes and Todber)

14 March 2020 Viaduct Open

 Today I had been planning to fish the Avon in pursuit of some big Chub, but the weather looked against it being fishable so mid week I spoke to Greg and we decided to fish the open at Viaduct.

On arriving at the draw I realised that there were going to be more than the 20 I thought were turning up and that we would now be split over Cary and Cambell.  Brews drunk, hellos dished out it was time for the draw, Greg and I had decided that we would go a quid if we drew a similar area as the venue can be very peggy at times, as it turned out he was on 113 ad I was on 114 so a quid wager it was.

I got my peg and it was obvious that there was a few fish moving around in front of us as they were showing all the way between pegs 110 to my left and 115 to my right. Due to this I decided on a simple plan which would consist of fishing the pole about 8 metres to try and push it towards Greggs 13 metre line, a bomb rod to fish meat and pellet and waggler rod to fish the same over the top.  It turned out Greg set up at 16m later!! I was ready well before the all in so decided to give Gregg some good advice as he was going on about just fishing for skimmers, I tried to get inside his head I would regret this decision later.

At the all in I fed about 30 grains of hemp and a few cubes of meat on my 8 metre line and then pinged the waggler out into the middle, I then waited and waited and waited.

I've been watching Greg catch shallow on the pole at 16 metres and the guys to his left were catching fish, I was starting to despair come close to the two hour point when nothing had happened to such a point then I decided to use a lighter bomb on my bottom rig and then I dipped my bait in some glug, the bait was in the water for about four minutes and carp number one was on. It came in quick and it was a nice double so a good start. I pinged the rig out again and I had a second bite pretty quickly after that and again for the third bite and soon I was starting to catch up with Greg who was currently saying he had about 50 pounds and my 3 fish went about 30 pounds.

I had to go on the waggler and tried the short pole line but at this point I was getting fed up so I decided to start a margin line. I got off my box set up another top kit plumbed up down the margins on top kit plus one left and right and start throwing in some meat.

Over the next hour I had another Carp on the tip and a foul hooker in the margin, I was reckoning to about 50lb to Gregs 70 so it was close, but I then sat there fishless for the next hour and a half, whilst Greg had 4 quick carp from down his left hand edge. I was using all the tricks I had by this point and suddenly moaning was a viable tactic and the tip flew around with another carp on pellet.

Charlie in the swim to my right was now catching down his edge as well so I decided to follow suite and in the last 30 minutes I had 4 more carp that probably went 40lb between them, then it was the all out.  The day had been a rollercoaster but I was admitting to 100lb with 11 carp from 4 to 14lb in weight.

The history books will show that Greg had 128lb I had 100lb 10oz (not a bad guess) and Charlie won the match with about 155lb so I was well and truly Harried (Battered both sides).  Still it was a really good day getting out and catching a few fish and trying to get my eye in for later in the year.

What would I do different:

I should have spent less time on the waggle oin the early parts of the match as the wind was too strong and was making presentation difficult, I should have also set up a long pole line and short pole line rather than a line in the middle of the two areas, I only needed 3 more fish to give Greg a run for his money, so in the next few months I will be mostly tying more rigs 😊.

Rigs used:

Feeder 1:

Rod: Drennan S7 10ft Carp Feder with 1.5oz tip

Reel: Cadence CS5 4000

Line: 8lb sensor, 0.19mm powerline hooklength

Hook: 12 QM1

Feeder: 20g Guru cage

Waggler:

Rod: Drennan ultralight 12ft

Reel: Cadence CS10 4000

Line: 4lb sensor,

Hook: 18 Guru pellet wag pre tied to 0.17mm

Float: 3.5g Drennan visi wag.

Pole Margin:

Elastic: Preston 17H

Line: 0.21mm to 0.19mm Powerline

Hook: 4 T175

Float: 0.4g Drennan Carp 3

Pole short:

Elastic: Blue Colmic Hollow

Line: 0.19mm to 0.15mm Powerline

Hook: 2 Tubetini 175

Float: 0.2g Drennan Carp 4

Avoiding the Blank 20 pt 2 (Dorset Stour and Hampshire Avon Chub)

Avoiding the Blank 20 Part 1

So here is my fist Vlog of 2020.

I have spent most of my time chasing Chub on Rivers and Roach on Still waters over the last month.

I hope you enjoy.

22 Jan 2020- AAF Group 2 Match- All Cannings K&A canal

So today saw 22 of us off to the All Cannings stretch of the K&A canal run by Devizes angling club,  I had volunteered myself to help Bri out with the pegging so it was a half 5 start for me to get up, my car loaded and meet him at the car park before dawn.

The pegging went without any real glitches, we would have liked to have done a recce in the daylight but neither of us had the time so it was a headlamp and torch job.  The canal looked good, quite clear, a little cat ice and it was flowing towards Marlborough so thats always a good start.

Once we had finished walking up and down the canal it was time to set up the draw in the Kings Arms pub in the village, they had very kindly opened early for us all to get a breakfast and have somewhere warm to set up and do the draw.

Once the festivities had been taken care of I managed to pluck peg B4 out of the bucket of doom, this peg was literally the middle peg of the match, well between B4 and B5 due to the numbers, B section was the tightest pegged section and to be fair as I was walking down the towpath I was already planning my excuses for the day.

As you can see from the picture I had some straggly reeds on the far bank and that was about it, I had walked past boats, overhanging trees all sorts of nice looking features so more excuses were logged for later.  I got to my peg and started to set my box up as I wanted to try and get all the disturbance of nets, plumbing and thumping up and down the bank out of the way as soon as possible so that I could leave the swim quiet for a while before the all in, this I hoped would allow me to get a run on the guys around me and maybe claw back some points in what I was classing as a damage limitation exercise for the day.  As i placed my box down I found the Ice that was running halfway across the canal so clearing a wide channel in that to fish was my first job.

once that was done it was placing the keepnet and tying it across the front of my box so that it would not move in any boat wakes, then I set my rigs up.

The plan was simple, a short bread line that I would push left or right if I needed plumbed up in the deepest part due to the clarity, then a caster line across against the right hand side of the reeds and a worm line across this time against the reeds to the left.  To be fair I wasn't really fancying the reeds as it was only 2 feet deep against them, but they were my only feature so they were in the plan.

Starter rigs plumbed I decided to check that the bread rig was shotted correctly as i had only tied it the night before from memory, it needed a couple of number 13's but as I was sorting the trimming shot I was getting knocks on the rig on what was going to be my bread line, I thought that as long as I didn't do anything stupid I could be alright today.  I decided to have a cup of coffee and as I placed the flask down behind me it slipped from my hand making an almighty thud on the frozen ground, well so much for the element of surprise I thought.  I managed a quick walk back to the car to get a towel and then I was ready for the all in, my opening gambit was a thumbnail sized ball of liquidised bread that had been run through a 2mm riddle, then mixed with a little hemp and hemp water.  That was fed on the short line at top kit plus 3 in 4 ft of water, then I cupped 20 grains of hemp and 10 caster onto my caster line at 11.5m.  Now it was crunch time.

I slipped a 5mm punch onto the hook and shipped the rig out onto the short line only for the float to remain motionless, 1 minute, 2 minutes another piece of bread was put on the hook and finally an indication as I missed a very finicky bite.  I was starting to flap a little by now as the guy to my right had had 2 fish from the far bank, Craig to my left was catching straight away and all I could see up and down the section was people swinging and netting fish.... EEEK.

I had a quick word with myself and started to concentrate on how I was lowering the bait over the spot, I knew it was going to be hard but this was ridiculous, it took a few minutes but after reducing the hookbait to 4mm, shallowing up by an inch and holding the rig with the float out of the water for a count of 8 before lowering the whole lot down usually saw the float continue down the hole and a roach hang it self on the end.  It started to get good and I was catching a fish a put in when disaster, a boat was slowly chugging along straight down the track,  as soon as it passed I went straight back over the top more in hope than expectancy and unfortunately the damage had been done as the float caught some weed straight away.

I decided to try and regroup the fish, so it was time to start the across worm line, 4 dendrabenas were finely chopped and 10 casters added to them in the cup as an initial feed for the line, I then cupped a small hard ball of licky on the short line and then went straight over the top of it.  Not alot happened, I had a couple of micro roach so after 10 minutes I decided to have a look on the long line, I was only going to give it a count of about 100 so I got very exited when it started bobbing about after 40 seconds, the strike saw a small perch head about 20m down the canal, I may have been a little excited.  That was the end of the action on the long line but as I returned to the short line the roach had returned and by feeding small nuggets of bread when the stamp of the roach became see through I was able to keep the slightly larger fish coming.

This was largely the pattern for the day, I started a new track bread line at about halfway through the match and this gave me another 15-20 small roach when the first line had dried up completely, my worm line got switched to 13m down the canal in the track to my left, this got started with 90 minutes to go and by careful feeding I had 2 perch for 12oz in the last 20 minutes from it. I stopped feeding the caster line and started a bread line against the reeds and this provided a steady run of small roach for around an hour and finally with 30 minutes to go I fed a small hard ball of licky on my original short bread line and in the last 15 minutes I had 8 roach off it that were all bigger than the micro roach I was catching across.

It didn't take me long to pack up and there were tales of woe up and down the canal, the end pegs both seemed to have done well and Jase on B8 was actually fishing against me in the knockout so it was interesting to see ho he had done.  So, Jase had 2.250Kg, Rocky next to him had 2.050KG I knew it was going to be close as I wasnt sure how many roach I had managed but after a few lower weights it was my turn. 2.800Kg then Mike on the other end peg weighed 2.300Kg I think so I had managed to win the section, from the middle, to say I was happy was an understatement and to be fair I am still a little shocked, but my perch helped no end.

We all met up back at the pub and I managed to figure out that I had also come first in the match, happy days. And that's it really Blog done, it was a nice day although a little chilly and the 2 boats we saw knocked the fishing back for everyone but that's winter fishing on the canal.

What would I do differently?
Not alot really, maybe lighter elastic for the eyes fishing across and a smaller designated bread rig for that line rather than bodging my caster rig.

Bread short:

Elastic: 5 slip

Line: 0.11mm to 0.08mm

Hook: 20 PR311

Float: 0.6g DS14H

Worm across:

Elastic: White Hydro 

Line: 0.17mm to 0.11mm 

Hook: 16 B560

Float: 4X12 Dibber

Worm Track:

Elastic: Double 5 but swapped to white hydro later

Line: 0.17mm to 0.11mm 

Hook: 16 B560

Float: 0.3g Frenzee float

Caster and Bread Across:

Elastic: Double No. 2 slip

Line: 0.11mm to 0.08mm

Hook: 20 Colmic B957

Float: 0.2 AS3