Sunday 8th January - Bristol Commercial House League Round 5, Kennet and Avon Canal, Bath / Bathampton

This was the first match of 2017 for me, a Team Match and on one of my favourite venues. The League consists of 9 Teams of 6 with 5 Teams in 'A' Div and 4 Teams in 'B' Div. My Team are in 'B' Div as we only came back into the League last September.
Team mate Rob Wood went down with man flu on Saturday night so arriving at the draw we were one short. Not for long lol... one Team turned up with 7 anglers so we borrowed Tony Mazyk, happy days.
Nicola and Mike Goodhind assisted by Vince Lunn do a great job running the League and had their work cut out doing the pegging in order to avoid the boats and the resident Otter. They provided a nice little guide in order to get to the pegs.

Team Captain Chris Hook done the draw, we were more or less first in due to paying the Pools nice and early. The Team card came back and I saw I was on C3. Not a bad area and I thought it would be very fair due to the big bay not being pegged.

I had not ordered any bloodworm and joker but took Robs pack just in case, the rest of the Team had some.

Parking and access to my Section was easy and I was on C3 by 08:45 so plenty of time to set up. I passed Matt Challenger on C1 who suggested there may be a few fish about if I was in the ''Section''.

I had a nice big gap between the boats and I thought the peg would fish OK.

I had a really nice depth down the track, around 4' 6'' so set up a punched bread rig for fishing just off bottom at 12:00 o'clock and set up another similar track rig for fishing just on bottom at 10:00 and 14:00. Finally a chopped rig for 13 meters across about 0.5 of a meter out from the far bank where it was about 2'.

Bait tray was a little busy with worm, blood worm and joker, pinkie, caster, squats, red maggot and bread.

At the start I fed the track straight in front with liquidised bread and then fed the far bank with chopped worm, caster and squats at 10:00 and a ball of joker across at 14:00.

Starting on 6mm punch nothing happen for 10 minutes which was a bit concerning so fed another cup of bread. Next put in I had a small roach around 2ozs. Expecting a sail away bite as soon as I put the rig back in nothing happened so lifted it and dropped it twice which gave me a great bite and the No.3 elastic shoot out after the strike. A skimmer of around a pound and a bit was soon netted. After an hour no more skimmers showed but I did have a few roach, nothing to write home about though. I had topped up the far bank lines after 45 minutes as well as putting some chopped worm and caster in down the track at 10:00 o'clock.  

My first look across at 10:00 with red maggot got me a chunky roach of about 5 ozs, the float buried very quickly and a few more followed. Resting this line after 15 minutes I had a look over the joker with blood worm resulted in more roach but they were much smaller so decided to go back down the track for a while over the chop and caster with maggot.

Good decision this as I had 4 perch in a row and one was a pound plus.

The rest of the match I really only caught across to my left and down the track to my left. I kept busy trying different hook baits and topped up my main lines little and ofter. I had a 30 minute quiet spell due to a double boat mooring up immediately to my right.

The canal pulled quite hard at times and boat traffic was busy enough as was the tow path behind me. The surface of the canal was covered in debris as if someone had been doing some trimming so lots of rubbish on the line when brining in fish but you just have to get in the right mindset and focus.

At the all out I thought I had about 5lbs. I walked up to Mike Goodhind on C2 while waiting for the scales and he told me he had netted a decent skimmer, had the net on his lap and a dog of the boat beside him jumped into the net and made off with the fish! Got to be a first.

Scales came down and I was pleased to weigh 6lbs 9ozs.

Jeff Surman suggested that would be enough to win the ''B'' Div Section. It was, ''A'' and ''B'' Section weights below.

Matt Challenger had a good day on C1 catching quality skimmers down the track.

Back at the results the Team had a good day with my Section win and about 3 second in Sections.

Results as follows on the day:

A Div 

1st   Preston Thatchers A & Bathampton Mosella B

3rd   Preston Thatchers  B

4th   Bathamptom Mosella A

5th   M & N Electrical

B Div

1st   Maver

2nd  Stand and Deliver

3rd  DW Builders

4th  Sensas Nomads

Individuals

1st   Tom Moretti 20lbs 12oz

2nd  Rob Randall 18lbs 13oz

3rd   ?  15lbs 2oz

4th  Matt Challenger 14lbs

5th  Nigels Evans 13lbs 11oz

6th  Nigel Wyatt 12lbs 10oz

Not sure where I am fishing next weekend but hope to go on the River Kenn Tuesday.