I grew up fishing the 'Spill and part of the reason I stopped match fishing previously was the decline in numbers fishing matches on this river (plus the KSD and Bridgwater/Taunton Canal).
Also the fact the banks had been totally changed since yesteryear with plenty of reeds and weed in the venue, plus it is clearer and fishing is tough at times.........predation too hasn't helped.
I arrived in plenty of time despite not getting to sleep until gone 4am..!! A short while was spent chatting before everyone was ready to do the draw. I fancied a pug upstream towards the motorway, so permanent pegs 155 and 154 would be good, otherwise maybe pegs 147, 148 or 149. All these pegs are a touch wider than others and often hold a few more skimmers and bream.
We paid our dues and the golden pegs were picked. I waited 'til 3rd from last before plucking my peg, that turned out to be number 151. Not too happy, not too dis-pleased.
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| River Huntspill, Withygrove, p151 |
After getting my kit over the gates and back onto my trolley, I made the long-ish walk to my peg...........we have it so much easier on commies, especially given we carry tonnes of kit!!
At my peg I surveyed the scene, the wind was rather strong so I didn't bother with the pole (that's twice in 2 weeks!!). I had some weed that was patchy right up to about 11m out, which could be a pain when playing fish.
So I set about mixing my groundbait with bream in mind, 21/2kgs of Sensas Red Lake, 1/2kg Sensas Bream and 1/4kg of Sensas squid/octopus just to add some fishmeal type scent to the mix, plus it does help binding.
I had on the side tray some hemp, caster, worms and maggots.
I then set up my tackle, this was a 3.5m whip and 2 feeder rods and 2 waggler rods, but I wont mention the wagglers again as surprisingly I never had a fish on it all day, I though they'd be bankers.
My feeder set-ups were one on braid with a 2oz open end cage feeder, the 2nd was on 4lb mono and a standard 25g open end drennan jobbie. Both rods had 0.10 hooklengths of 2ft and size 18 B611 hooks. I also had some method feeders with me as I know peeps have been catching on that once the skimmers arrive, mostly using a couple maggots as hookbait.
The all in sounded at 10:30 and I fired around 10 tennis ball sized balls of groundbait over my feeder line, some maggots were chucked on the whip line and some hemp/caster went out to around 18m for my waggler. I had hoped to fish the wag further out but wind decided that I shouldn't.
I began on the larger feeder for half hour before swapping to the smaller one.
Not much happened for a while with myself, Vic Bush(p152) and Eric Fourace (p153). My 1st fish came in the form of a 6oz skimmers, the time was 12:15,
The angler to my right on p150 had been catching a few bits on the waggler. That's all I could see, though word filtered down that Giffy and Keith Clapp on 148 and 146 respectively, had caught a few fish each.
My next fish arrived thanks to the whip, a single 3oz perch. Back on the tip I waited a while before another skimmer was netted at around 2pm. This was soon followed by a little roach on the feeder and another roach on the whip.
Not a lot was happening, but Vic had landed a couple fish on the feeder, but he wasn't catching the world on fire either.
At around 2:30pm a solid pull round on the tip saw me connect with something substantial, I gingerly played it in and was pleased to see a bream of about 6lb surface out in front, only a couple turns from netting...........then bam!! A big swirl on the surface saw a pike (not a big one either) attack my bonus, sadly the poxy pike was pulled off my hook......bollocks!!
Next cast saw a smaller bream of about 2lb engulfed by said pike, then a decent perch was made lunch by my new resident fish........poxy friggin pike!! Nearly 10lb of fish stolen off the hook in a mad 15 minutes.
Soon after I had a stroke of luck, I landed a perch of 5oz and a 4oz eel. I also managed to snare a big bream/roach hybrid of around 3lb, it took my maggot hookbait on the retrieve......I actually thought I was attached to a pike so I bullied it a bit before realising it was a 'countable' fish.
So with and hour to go until the 4:30 finish I had around 5lb I thought.
Vic had landed a decent proper bream and a few other fish.
The last hour flew by without a fish, but I had switched to worm and maggot cocktail hoping for a proper bream or a couple skimmers.
I was soon packed away and took two trips to the car before catching up with the weigh-in.
A glance at the board saw 2 weights of 8lb+ on the pegs below the bridge. No other weights of note.
I managed to get to see Keith Clapp on peg 146 put just over 20lb of fish on the scales before Giffy on peg 148 amass 16lb exactly.
Peg 150 weighed in 6lb 8oz, I honestly thought he'd had close to 10lb as he'd been catching small fish most of the match, plus a couple skimmers. But his last hour was poor.
Next to weigh was me, and when I pulled my net out I could see I had around 7lb, but everyone was keen to see my hybrid, I reckoned on 2nd look, that it was pushing 3.5lb, It was a gorgeous fish, in hindsight I should have taken a photo.
My weight was infact 7lb.
Next to weigh was Vic Bush, I thought he'd be on around 10lb or more, but the scales gave him 8lb 14oz,
I didn't follow the scales any further but made my way back to the car park.
I chucked my nets in the car and waited for the board to arrive back, which wasn't too long. The last few weights had been less than mine and no proper bream were caught from the end couple of pegs.
Mark soon called the results and dished out the winnings, surprisingly I had picked up the section money by default x3, with the top 3 overall coming from my section.
Results:
1st Keith Clapp, 20lb 1oz from p146
2nd Giffy (Chris Ware), 16lb, p148
3rd Vic Bush, 8lb 14oz, p 152
Sections went to myself and Vince Brown.
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| Weigh sheet |
I do enjoy non-commie type venues where silvers are the target, sadly we don't see many matches on these venues.
Next up for me is a match on Brick Lake at Sedges, with the PSV mafia.
Until next time, tight lines.
Lee
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