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.