I fished the second round on the Upper Bristol Avon at Chippenham and Sutton Benger today but I haven’t got the full results as I write this as they haven’t been emailed to me yet , I’ll post them later, so in the meantime here’s my match:
I drew pegJ6 at Monkton Park in Chippenham, the river here was about 20M wide, 9ft deep and gin clear. I managed to get Fox platform into the margins with the long legs on and when they finally stopped sinking into the mud I got seated and set up:
1. 1grm Sensas Jean- Francois-0.12mm Garbo- line, olivette and 3 no 10 droppers 0.08mm bottom to 20 Drennan polemaster competition hook and no 5 Kamasan elastic Fished just touching bottom at 11.5m
2. 0.8grm Garbolino DS9 -0.10mm Garbo- line, olivette and 3 no 11 droppers 0.08mm bottom to a 20 Drennan polemaster competition hook, no. 4 Kamasan elastic Fished just touching bottom at 11.5M
3. 0.6grm Sensas Pra Loup -0.10mm Garbo- line, strung no.10’s and 2x 11 droppers 0.8mm bottom to a 22 Drennan polemaster competition hook no 4 Kamasan Elastic - fished just off bottom at 11.5M
4. 1.5grm Garbolino DC 18 -0.18mm Garbo- line, olivette and 3 no 10 droppers 0.16mm bottom to a 16 Drennan wide gape hook, matched to white hydrolastic Fished touching bottom for chopped worm at 6 sections with chopped worm
5. 13ft milo titanic rod with a 2AAA waggler with 4 no8 and 3 no10 shot down the line 0.14mm mainline to 0.08mm hooklength and a 22 B560 hook
My mix of Groundbait was VDE World Champion, Black Secret, Supermatch and brown crumb
And at the start I was debating just cupping 3 balls in and feeling my way in but at the last moment thought what the hell, So made up 8 double handfuls of Groundbait with 150ml of casters and a handful of frozen pinkies and on the whistle balled the lot in at 11.5M, baitdroppered some chopped lobs and casters onto the 6 section line.and catapulted a dozen casters right over for the waggler.
I started the 1 gram rig over groundbaited line but never had a bite, bugger I should have cupped it in, I switched to the 0.6grm rig over the same line and after about 5 minutes had a small roach on a single fluro pinkie, followed a few minutes later by a smaller perch, thinking the fish may have shied away from the groundbait? I shipped out to 14.5M with the same rig and never had a bite, 2 1oz perch on the choppy line, followed by an unsuccessful go on the 11.5M line, had me thinking that I had f*cked it up by putting all the GB in? So I picked up the waggler, threaded on a single maggot and through it out, amazingly it went under and a 6oz roach was soon in the net, followed by another a little smaller
By the end of the first hour I had 7 fish, for about 1 ½ lb with all the better fish on the waggler, I was however missing the odd bite, and with the fish being of a good stamp I wanted to make the most of them so I slipped a few extensions on my G-Max 1000 so that I was fishing at 16M + a short butt, and with the light rig on I was catching the odd roach, and this is how the match went, a few on the wagg, a few on the pole and the odd fish on the 11.5M line over the ground bait, A quick go on the choppy only produced 2 more 1oz perch, and in the end I finished with 30 fish for an estimated 6lb?
Overall I fed about ¾ of a pint of casters and about half that amount of hemp. Along with the Groundbait I put in at the start, which I thought may have been a mistake? That was until Stu Dabbs wandered up with the scales from the last peg and he was admitting to: “8 or 9lb? Might do double figures?” After he had put 12 in at the start?
We got to the first peg below the wooden footbridge and Ady McTiffin was sat there, Ady had just won the previous 2 84 peg practice matches, so was in a rich vain of drawing form! He wasn’t too bad at fishing either as he plonked 10.8.8 of roach, perch and a 1lb eel on the scales, next to him Eamonn Byrne had 5.6.0 of mostly large perch, Ian Sheppard of Gordon League was next and had about 12oz of small fish to go with a chubb and a tench for 7.1.0 !! that’s done me!! Derek Jarman had 4.9.5 next to me and then it was my time to weigh, amazingly my 30 fish went 7.4.0 to pip the tench and Chubb weight! Mark Kimber had 3.12 the other side of me then it was Stu’s time to weigh his 8 or 9 lb? Well the needle stopped at 16.11.0!! almost 8+9lb !!
Overall Stu came 2nd and Ady 3rd So I sneaked the section by double default.
I’ll post the full results when they get sent too me.
Round 3 is on the Bristol avon at chippenham and Sutton benger, next week. But I’m away, so no blog, next week only the results.
