Evesham

Right! Just let me get all the horrible, depressing, annoying shit down on paper and perhaps then I can get on with the blog and hopefully my life…….

40 minutes in and I’d caught a few fish on my cheeky stickfloat line at 2 rods out, but it had gone quiet. Last run through then and out on the waggler line, which I’d been prepping from the start. Run down, float buries, Chub!! OK, 20 fine wire to 0.08 so not exactly tooled up for Chub but doable with care. I let the fish run out to the middle as I thought that would be less snaggy, and I was actually doing reasonably well and had the float out of the water. But then a piece of crap floated downstream and bumped against the rig, causing Mr Chub to have a head fit and there it was gone. Too much for the hooklength. Not a massive fish, I saw it clearly and probably closer to 1 Lb than 2. Quite a long time later I run my waggler rig with its B520 to 0.11 hooklength down for the umpteenth time. It buried, the thump thump of a decent Chub, I played out no more than 3′ of line and………solid!! Straight into a snag mid-river.

There! Thats better, I can feel the tension ebbing away. So the day itself……Evesham midweek qualifier, 53 (?) booked in. Proceedings kicked off with a minute’s silence for Ray South (RIP mate) which was a nice touch. I then opted for A7 which turned out to be peg 50. Interesting draw, because after being in the doldrums all season it had suddenly thrown up both days on the previous weekend, possibly because Lee Edwards had given them a tumping a week ago on peg 52. It is a lovely looking peg, one of the few with reeds opposite, and has a strong reputation for Roach as well, although I was assured that the Roach just weren’t showing there this year.

So good potential, and I set out to fish it positively, stickfloat with maggot to search around inside for Perch, waggler rig for across, small blockend for the same line, and two hemp rigs to fish at 9m. I should mention perhaps that the water was absolutely crystal clear. Perhaps I should also mention that my rationale for using a stickfloat rig was that it gave me some leeway to play a bonus fish if necessary. Isn’t life ironic sometimes?

I kicked off on the stick feeding hemp and a few maggots, and started prepping the waggler line. I had a dumpy Perch, then to my surprise a Roach, before going on to take 5-6 Dumpy Perch and 3 Roach altogether, then the line went dead. Refer to above! After losing aforementioned Chevin I scaled up to a B520 and 0.11 (yes, stable door, horse, bolted) and persevered for another 15 minutes but only hooked one more dumpy Perch which proceeded to drop off at the net. Yes, as you can well imagine, I may have been calm and collected on the outside but inside I was a seething mass of bile.

So I switched to the waggler and started prepping the hemp line. A bit of Bleak noise on the wag but nothing more meaningful, so I chucked that up the bank and had a look on the hemp. After all, I’d already caught a few Roach on maggot, so they must be having it. I did actually have a few hits on the 4×14 rig but exactly that, little dips and jags, so I tried the 4×12 rig, then the 4×14 rig again and tried changing the rig presentation etc., etc.. So I set the hemp rigs aside and went back on the wag, and then tried the small blockend, but two chuck resulted in me being snagged twice, and the second time I lost the lot. So the feeder rod went up the bank and I had another look on the hemp rigs, but not before I’d run the stick through again and taken a small Roach right down the swim. But this time I didn’t even get the dinks and jags on the rigs Now its taken me 3 or 4 minutes to type all of this and you’ve probably read it in 60 seconds, but in real fishing time this was 2 hours of the match and I’d managed to drop two very small Roach into the net. The expression which captures all of this tactical chopping and changing is ‘faffing about’.

I’d essentially fallen down the middle of the two options that I had in my mind to approach the peg, i.e. waggler across for Chub or hemp inside for Roach. I’d deliberately not set up to fish any ugly fish flatfloat lines, I thought the peg was potentially too good. So with no Roach showing on the seed, I went all out on the wag for the final 2 hours, hooked and lost Chub#2 fairly early in this spell and managed just a few small Roach and a solitary Perch. There was a brief bit of excitement about an hour before the end when the line tightened to the rod while I was feeding. I picked up (carefully!!) and found myself playing a decent fish. Game on then, right gear and in clear water. The fish ran upstream and I managed to get it to come up so the float was out. Lovely! Then whatever it was spat a small Chublet out at me!! Presumably a Pike but could have been a Perch or even a big Chub, the Chublet wasn’t badly marked which is usually the case if they’ve been inside a Pike’s mouth. But in the interests of sanity I will assume Pike.

All of the above, 1-12-0, and Thanks for Coming! Wheels off a bit after what has been a decent run of weights from near 4 to 6 Lbs odd, except for a 2 Lb weight off peg 15 when I fished the wrong approach well. I think today I fished the right approach (other than the faffing bout period) but not well, or at least without any good luck on my side. Must try harder!!!

Oh, and it was , of course, black with Chub on pegs 52 and 54, they’d obviously decided after their weekend jaunt that the other man’s grass isn’t always greener.

Woodstock

So, what to do Tuesday after a slimefest on the Monday? Target another slimefest of course. So off up to Woodstock and dropped in on peg 40 (nearest to access gate). I set up to fish an 0.3g rig at 11m over groundbait, caster and some corn.

Cupped in 4 balls of feed then added a half cupful of caster and some hemp for good measure, and dropped in with corn. A decent Bream early doors was encouraging and a second slightly smaller example soon after was even more so. But then I had a spell where I was getting lots of half-hearted indications plus the odd liner, but no fish. I eventually nailed a couple of F1s after switching to worm and caster cocktail, then a third Bream and eventually a fourth and fifth Bream when I discovered that they would follow a ball of micros down. Plus a few more F1 C**p, some Roach and even 3 Perch which are a rarity.

So it was OK but not good, definitely too still and probably a bit bright at times. But I definitely love lifting into those Bream on the lightish laccie, great fun!! Evesham tomorrow and Pontsticill on Sunday. My first visit there since 1983!! Wonder how much I’ll recognise?

Hendre Lake

Apologies for the kink in the timeline, we now return to real time. Monday isn’t usually a fishing day but Fflur was in full-on teenager mode and wanted to go back to her Mum’s early so that she could do her nails. No problem for me so I dropped her off and then wondered what to do with the second half of the day. I’d checked the weather forecast earlier and although it had been a miserable wet day up to that point it was promised to clear up late afternoon, so I decided that I’d take advantage of the opportunity and nip down to Hendre for a short session.

As I left the house to pack the car it was still raining lightly, which was a bit of a concern. It became even more of a concern when it started tipping it down during the 10 minute drive to the lake, and it was still having a go when I unloaded the car and had a quick look around for a peg. I opted for peg 9 as at least the wind was slightly side on rather than directly in my face, but I was still a bit uncertain as it was far from pleasant while I was setting up. The good news was that the Westerly wind was spot on, creating a Breamalicious chop. The even better news was that for the first time this season, due no doubt to the weather, Hendre did not look like a combination of the Glastonbury Festival and Barry beach on a Bank Holiday.

Classic Hendre approach today. Large Hybrid feeder with micros topped with groundbait, and band’ums/wafters on a size 16 Guru QM1 to a 8″ 0.16mm hooklength. Two liners in the first 20 minutes held some promise, plus the rain was easing off leaving that nice chop with overcast conditions. The Bream had to feed!! And sure enough they did. first fish after 20 minutes, 5 fish in the first hour, then same again for the second and third hours. 15 Bream between 2Lbs and maybe 4Lbs tops, a proper slimefest. And about time too, because I was starting to lose faith in the venue. But perhaps now as we move through the summer peak numbers fishing will drop off and so will the amount of free food that the C**p anglers throw in

A lovely easy session and probably even more enjoyable because it was so ad hoc.

Morgans Pool

This blog is a bit out of step because the session was a week or two back, probably the Thursday or Friday after my last Evesham match. I’d decided to have a look at Morgans again because I fancied a session on the tip, so I duly made the longer trip from the carpark and dropped in on peg 16.

To summarise, a 3 hour stint on conventional cage feeder and dead red tactics proved useless, and I was seriously considering an early bath but decided instead to switch to groundbait and micros on a hybrid feeder with a band’um. And this caught me 4 Bream plus the odd small Skimmer. Interesting, because clearly the fish develop a fishmeal obsession during the warmer months.

Clanfield

Every time I fish Clanfield I end up being blown off my box, fighting my pole and chasing my cap along the bank. And every time as I’m packing up I’m muttering never again. Today was no different…….sunny intervals and a moderate breeze……..my arse!!! It blew an absolute hooley, every direction facing between upstream and full downstream. And then there was a biblical downpour lasting a good hour, at least half an inch of rain. And that was straight in my face. I ended up wetter than an otter’s purse, as my mate Andy is fond of saying.

It started off because I was looking for a match which was a) on a Saturday and b) not Evesham. So I’d asked Dougie whether anyone his end was looking to pair up, and before I’d really had a chance to sanity check the idea and back out he’d found someone. So I wasn’t about to shit on that someone so Clanfield bound I was. On the way up I had been musing about the fact that I typically draw in or around the same areas. Never up the top, and certainly never down the bottom. But today I drew 94, which raised a few oohs and aahs, as it definitely has form. And it meant that I ended up driving through a whole new meadow and through a new gate to get me down to the bottom of the stretch. And when I got there, it is definitely a lush peg. Decent height off the water, flow inside, plumbed up at a reasonably even 6′, Chub bush opposite and downstream, and stick-ups and bushes downstream to the left. Lots of options.

So I set up a tip rod to fish a straight lead or small choppie feeder with lobworm on the hook, a waggler (which was somewhat over-optimistic), a 2g Perch flattie to fish down to the left, and 2g and 1g bodied rigs to fish over groundbait at 9m (the peg shallows up across and I guessed wind might be a challenge).

I kicked off by rolling 4 balls of feed with caster, hemp and dead pinkie, then running through with the 2g rig and maggot. I started picking up small Roach almost straight off, but did have to push the olivette down to the tell-tail to discourage Bleak First hour or so was fine, 15 Roach plus a few Dace and the odd Bleak, and the swim seemed to be building nicely. More of the same in the next 30 minutes but then I seemed to lose the plot and struggled for the next 20 minutes. I refed and tweaked the feeding pattern and decided I might as well have a look on a worm line anyway so I droppered caster left and had a look with a dendra. Nothing, not an indication. I probably pushed this line a bit too much, lifting and dropping the worm or dragging it around to try to provoke a response, but to no avail.

Still bemused by the total failure of the worm line, I dropped back in on the groundbait line and had a flurry of activity. It was all small Roach now and they were tending to drop back in spells, although I suspect the ever changing presentation wasn’t helping as the wind was strengthening and becoming even more variable. I fished out the next 90 minutes picking up odd bursts of small Roach but did have some issues with bumped fish and losing fish shipping back, so I switched from yello hydro to No.3 solid. But I was looking at 5Lbs+ at best, which I thought would be a poor result (not so, read on!), so I had a 30 minute spell where I put a legered lobworm up against every bush in the swim. This coincided with the downpour which was sweeping straight into my face, so in combination with zero interest, not a particularly happy period.

Eventually I reasoned that any Chub (or Perch) present and peckish would have maade their presence felt so I reverted to the pole, now feeding caster and hemp over the top and fishing caster on the hook. This saw me picking up Roach to the death, and with about 15 minutes to go I hooked a better fish which I initially thought might be a Skimmer (dream on) and was then definitely a Perch until I’d unshipped to my Top 4 whereupon a small Chub (6 oz?) took full advantage of my light elastic and showed its pedigree by burying otself in some crap by my feet. Oops!

I ended up with 3-11-0 which I considered to be an absolutely shameful performance as I’m convinced the peg was worth more, as demonstrated by Paul Glenfield on peg 93 who managed 7Lbs + in the same conditions (he is a bit good mind!). But actually Paul’s weight was a stand-out effort on the day, I was 4th overall in my zone, 5Lbs was 2nd so points dropped here. But my partner struggled in a very difficult top zone and we ended up with 22 points for about 10th.

So quite a few take-aways from what was in many ways a throwaway event. Clanfield is predominantly a pole venue, either to fish conventional rigs or to fish worm lines to features. And the Thames anglers are very good on their venues, as evidenced by Paul today. He was a different class, he battered me of an equivalent or probably worse peg. So the learning point for me is to not try to compete with the Thames cracks on their own venue. I’d sort of got to this point anyway when I’d decided last year to let the Thames festival go. But I think there is a broader message about choosing and concentrating on venues which work to my strengths, because there are just so many good anglers out there now. To a certain extent this year’s approach to Evesham has been the model and has borne some results, so maybe I will park my concerns about how hard it can fish and keep working on the various approaches that can work and just work with the draws.

Newbridge

Back on the Bristol Avon on the Thursday, afternoon knock-up. I drew 33 this time, so parking behind my peg was obviously a one-off. But 33 isn’t too bad as long as you pick the right line with a shuttle.

I’d taken my pole down to the peg but once I got there I realised that, as the peg is high off the water and very close to the path, the pole wasn’t a good option. I ended up only setting up a feeder rod, which I was happy enough with as I was end peg and I wanted to fish positively.

So, baby’s hand on a size 12 Tubertini series 18 to 0.14, and I kicked off with a large cage feeder to mid-river to get some gear in. It wasn’t long before I was getting knocks on the drop and I started strangling a succession of small Roach followed by a string of small Chublets and the odd small Perch. But small was the common denominator. And I progressed from maggot to various worm options to corn and back again, all the time building up a table for the Bream which must inevitably turn up at some point.

Problem was that nobody had told the Bream, so I ended up with 2-3Lbs of bits which I chucked back, so DNW. Very frustrating, because a pleasure angler further down on 39 had taken 7 Bream during the morning, so they were in the area and had been feeding. The match was won with 18 Lbs off peg 20 and my mate Nige Evans was second with 11-14-0 off peg 10, all decent silvers on the pole and caster. Lovely fishing. As for me, must try harder!

Staverton – midweek Open

Change of venue for this week’s midweek match. Evesham is now fishing extremely hard due to low clear conditions and the cumulative impact of angling pressure, so I opted for the Staverton event instead. Attendance is holding up well, 29 this week (and Evesham of course is dropping, 42 this week).

The draw put me back on peg 44 where I’d been beaten up by Chub on the first match in the series, so I fancied a rematch. To that end, I fished short with a 6m whip over groundbait to stay well clear of my waggler line. I caught reasonably well for an hour on maggot feeding small knobs of groundbait but it was already fading when I had my first tussle with a Pike. I then wasted the next hour trying to revive the swim and trying hemp and tare (plenty of bites, no fish!!!) before I gave up and went across where I’d been pinging caster from the start. I had the usual quick response from small Chublets before that died off but I was still getting some Bleak action lower down the swim. A good half hour on that line resulted in no sign of any proper Chub, so I dropped back inside and gave the hemp and tare another chance and actually managed to hit the odd bite now, mainly small Roach but I did have a couple of better stamp fish. But I was getting a ridiculous number of missed bites, which could only have been very small fish having a go, something I’ve witnessed before at Evesham.

With 75 minutes left I’d come to the conclusion that I was headed for about 4Lbs+ if I carried on on the seed, and there was the ever present risk that if I did get them lined up the Pike would become an issue, so I switched back to the waggler to see if I could nail some late Chub but with no success. I ended up weighing 3-6-0 with a 3-8-0 default section winner. No complaints though because that individual was big Kev Abigail who had had to weigh in early as he is still recovering, so didn’t begrudge him that small victory for a minute. And the reason it was a default section was that Tony Scott on peg 46 had packed away his pole gear at 7pm which he thought was the all-out only to realise that he was an hour premature. That left him with just his waggler rod set up which he duly chucked out and hooked 4 Chub, landing 3, in a 15 minute spell. 10 Lbs and a match win. Lovely! Neil Richards was second with 9-12-0 off peg 31, all Chub.

Woodstock

I fancied a short session on the Tuesday so a 3 hour sprint down Woodstock, peg 26 so more of a walk than usual. Dead reds or corn on an 0.4g rig at 11m over groundbait and some loose corn and dead reds. Rather ominously I managed only a small Roach on the maggot so switched to corn which produced a Skimmer dead on the hour mark. And I was now getting a lot of fizzing and small indications on the float., but this wasn’t translating into fish in the net. A short run of better bites gave me 3 or 4 decent F1 C**p, but then it was back to liners and fizzing. I eventually managed a proper Bream and then a small F1, but that was it and the swim seemed to die off after that, so I was happy enough to pack up after 3 hours with about 10Lbs in the net. A very moody water today, others were struggling or had struggled during the day. Must try harder!

Newbridge

Saturday, and I fancied a change from an overly predictable Evesham so turned out for an Open at Newbridge. Unfortunately (and surprisingly), only another 7 turned out for the same match. But at least that meant a decent mix of pegs for us to go at, and to my amazement, I drew peg 18. The first time I have ever been able to park behind my peg at Newbridge. Definitely one off my bucket list.

Not an awful lot of flow and fairly clear but not gin, so I set up to fish at 11m with a 1.5g Sensas Avon for running through, a 2g Colmic Keel for edging through and a 4g Sensas Pawel for full-blown laying on. Hooks were Sensas 3405 20 to 0.08 on the light rig, same pattern in 18 to 0.09 on the 2 grammer and a size 16 B560 to 0.12 on the heavy rig. I set up a Top 5 just in case I needed to go down the hemp route but didn’t rig it up (2 second job if needed). I also assembled a feeder rod.

Cupped in 6 balls neat and 4 packed with caster and hemp. Really I could/should have balled it but I’m not brilliant when I’ve had some practice and stone cold as I was anything could have happened. The mix was probably Gros Gardons, crushed Hemp and brown crumb (I found it in the freezer!!!!). Dropped in with the 1.5g rig and maggot, pinging caster and hemp over the top. And to be honest I wasn’t in the slightest bit surprised to find that Bleak were an absolute bloody nuisance. Switching to caster on the 2g rig and bombing it through was better, but still frustrating, so after 20 minutes I switched to worm heads, and started to have a run of small but welcome Roach.

It wasn’t amazing but at least I was getting bites and the fish were just about worth having. But the disaster struck as I was shipping back on a small Roach and the Top 4 fell off (common Daiwa trait!). As it happend Warren Bates was watching me so I got him to pass me my feeder rod, clipped a bomb on and then discovered that I was wrapped around the tip. Sorted that and somehow managed to get a tangle around the reel. (yes, I was panicking which doesn’t help). By now the Top 4 plus fish had drifted downstream and was obscured by the tree on my left. So with Warren’s help I had to force my way in below my peg and somehow managed to cast over the rig and retrieve it and the Top 4. Somewhere in this process I lost the fish, probably piked, but that was minor irritation in the scheme of things.

It then probably took me fully 15 minutes to recover from this pantomine. Losing a Top 4 is probably the event that will cause my overworked ticker to blow up. The odd thing was that I was no longer getting regular bites on worm, which I put down to the break in feeding, but then the float buried and I found myself playing a decent fish. Nod, nod, nod. Skimmer! About 2 Lbs. I was very pleased to get that netted because It moved me along quite nicely. I, of course, did the obvious thing and dropped in with the heavy rig and a worm/caster cocktail. This actually got me a chunky Roach but no more Skimbobs, so I reverted to the 2g rig and was on this when Geraint showed up to tell me that the anglers downstream of me had a couple of pounds or less. I’d just told him about my Skimmer when the float buried again and I had another Skimmer. Or actually a Bream, a proper one! I can state positively now that although yellow hydro is a thing of great beauty it is not designed for playing 6Lb river Bream. But somehow everything held together and I slipped the net under it. It took ages to recover in the keepnet so it must have been as shagged out as I was.

This of course triggered another look on the heavy rig but with no success. I switched back to the 2g rig and managed to hook another Skimmer/Bream which did tthe normal nodding thing at first but then took an extraordinarily fast run downstream and seemed to surface right under the tree, snagging me in the process. Very odd, only thing I’ve seen similar to that was when commerial Skimmers leap clear of the water. Back on the heavy rig which proved to be a waiting game, but eventually Bream #2 snaffled a worm/caster cocktail and was landed with a little less drama thanks to solid 8 laccie. But that was about it.

It was pretty quiet on the worm now so I thought I’d have another look on the caster and surprisingly I started to pick up Roach, mainly small but with the odd chunkier example. Unfortunately Mr.Pike liked Roach as much as the Roach liked caster, which resulted in a few trashed rigs and numerous bust hooklengths, and then to cap it all I did a re-run of the lost Top 4 jape. Got the kit back with less hassle this time (practice makes perfect) and even recovered the fish but trashed the rig in the process. And finally Mr.Pike got bored or something and I was able to put a short run of small Roach together, until the Bleak returned which saw me end the match back on the worm head.

All of this excitement added up to 14-10-0. About an hour from the end I checked a missed call and discovered that it was from Tim Ford aka ‘legend’. It seemed rude not to respond and when I did we swapped estimated weights and Tim declared me the winner. But then I reminded him that ‘It ain’t over ’til the Fat Lady sings’ and sure enough when the last notes had reverberated around the Avon valley Tim had made a late surge to weigh 14-12-0. Well done that man. And when everyone got back after a protracted weigh-in peg 24 had had 20Lbs plus so that was a clear winner, Tim was second and myself third. I’d already got my wallet out when Kev Dicks explained ‘there’s only 8 of us Mike, so I’m only paying 2’, ‘look, see, I wrote it on my hand’. And indeed, there it was, on the hand of Kev, £75/£50. So it must be right………………………..

Evesham

Back up again for the midweek qualifier. This time C7 was Peg 1. Up until maybe two years ago this was an ATM. Every time an angler went here they came away with money. On the right river they would obliterate the opposition with Bream. But even on a non-Bream river there were probably half a dozen methods which singly or in combination would guarantee 6Lbs on a hard day and 10Lbs on a better day. So the normal outcome would be that the peg would win or frame, and in the unusual event that this was not the case then it would take the section straight out or by default anyway.

Sadly this is no longer the case. It threw up 24Lbs of Bream on Opening Day, but since that has only registered a low weight framing position and a default section pick-up. So I went to my peg with a fairly clear idea that peg 7 would frame and it could be between me and my team mate Kev Ellaby on peg 2 for the section pickup. I was also clear in my mind that attempting to fish my breadpunch/hemp appriach would only result in Tourettes, because the peg is (in)famous for its Pike and the steep bank slows down the shipping back allowing the Pike plenty of time to zero in.

So I set up a light stick to fish over loose fed maggot (in hindsight, a 5m whip might have been better), a 3AAA wag to fish about 1/3rd over, and two 3g flatfloat rigs to fish worm over choppie at 13m (one light worm, the other with riot gear on). Fed short, droppered in some choppie and caster long and came back inside on the stick. Plenty of bites for the first hour but I felt a bit of a busy fool. Small Bleak, very small Pommies, the odd small Dace or Roach, only a solitary Perch. I thought I was running at something like 12 to 16oz/hour, but I could see that I wasn’t going to carry that through the full match. I had a look on the wag and after a surprising lack of response (no small Bleak, Chublets etc.) the float buried down the peg and I hooked a Chub. I played it carefully and sure enough it had a look at the upstream pandocks but I steered it back carefully and lifted it expecting to see the onion ring. No onion ring, it was an angry Perch about 10oz!! But that was it on the wag, so I dropped in with the worm on my choppie line, and eventually got a response in the shape of a small Eel. Dropped in again and after another wait I lifted on a bite and all hell let loose because I was now playing what I soon realised was the resident alligator. Fortunately I got a rather catatonic Perch back. It was a bit quiet in choppie land after that, and my inside line was now very hard work so I chucked the tip over my wag line and managed to strangle a reasonable Perch. A second perch on that line was snaffled by my pet alligator and I ended up having to freespool it while I worked out how to knock the anti-reverse off. Sadly that Perch was a goner. So then I switched back to the wag and out of the blue managed to hook 5 Roach in 6 or 7 runs. I landed 4 but ended up sacrificing the 5th to Jaws And then to finish off a busy but also frustrating match I dropped back inside and picked up some krill before having a ‘shall I swing it/shall I net it/oh doesn’t matter now because it’s dropped off’ moment with a 3oz Roach, and then went on to catch a couple of the dumpy Perch that were totally absent earlier on.

All of the above saw me dropping 3-14-0 on the scales which was trumped by Kev’s 4-4-0 who took the default section money so I was 11th overall, 3rd in section and received a big thanks for coming. Overall the venue is now really starting to show the pressure coupled with the desperate need for some rain to generate flow and colour, or alternatively some settled warm weather to create an algae bloom. The same 4 or 5 pegs are dominating every match with the pegs in between proving to be challenging to put it mildly. Lots of 1Lb+ type weights today.