Catch Up (wish I could catch at the moment)

It's been a while since I blogged for various reasons 1) my blog set up changed for some reason and it took me a while to work out how to post etc, 2) a few projects at home (still ongoing) and 3) busy with my Club and Super League duties as captain.

Wednesday 15th July saw me at Staverton, drew peg 11 and had a couple of roach on the tare in 2 put in's. After that just little knocks on the tare and a few on hemp but they were a poor stamp of fish ended up 4lb plus for nowhere.

Saturday 18th I was on the River Kenn for our Clubs annual Charity Match. It was a good turn out with 32 attending and bream had been caught during the week. I drew peg 7, a good draw but only had 2 bootlace eels. 10 bream were caught during the match. Dan Dymond had 3 off peg 3 in the last hour of the match for 20lb 8oz and a match win. Craig Fletcher had 2 off peg 4 for 15lb 1oz for 2nd place and Paul Tedman-Whitemoor had 2 off peg 8 for 14lb, his first one was hooked and netted in the first minute.

Winner Dan Dymond

£300 was raised for the Orchard Trust which supports people with learning difficulties so a good result.

Sunday 19th I was back at Staverton for Round 4 of the Super League, there were 2 sections here plus 2 at Barton Farm. I drew a cracker of a peg, peg 29 which is a flyer if the chub feed. Sadly they did not and I ended up with 4lb 8oz and 7 points from 17. The rest of the team had a bad day as well.

As expected the long walk way past the sewer field at Barton Farm was the place to be and Dave Micklewright had a magnificent 51lb of bream from A2 with Andy Powell not far off the pace on A3 with over 40lbs.

Dave with part of his catch, think he referred to them as skimmers!

Wednesday 22nd July back at Staverton for the Wednesday Open, drew peg 11 again ffs! I thought I fished a good match and was really disciplined feeding 3 lines all match. I was doing ok on all of them. Wag, pole, whip. The fish were small though and the last 90 minutes I concentrated on the far bank line with the waggler and lost 2 chub in a snag halfway across the river. I weighed 4lb 10oz and the section was won with just over 6lbs so I should have had that. 

Tony Scott won the match landing 3 chub out of 4 in the final hour.

Saturday 25th July Chris and I fished the Angling Trust Canal Pairs on the Glossy. Draw was OK with me on 174 and Chris on 240. The canal was a grey silt colour due to water being pumped in from a dirty River Severn. The bream did not really feed. I think the best weight was 4 bream off the end peg down at Pilot. I had a few eels, ruff, perch and skimmers for 2lb 8oz which was a lot better than some. Needless to say we didn't qualify.

I have had a day off today (Sunday 26th July) as I feel fished out but no doubt I'll be back at Staverton on Wednesday. 

I walked along the River at Bradford on Avon today where the match was in the last Super League. Boats of all descriptions, swimmers, dogs in the water and what felt like hundreds of people. This year has been unique and there are a lot more people using our waterways than normal, I just hope they don't get to like it too much.

There are also a few people I know a bit down in the dumps concerning their fishing performance but that's just the way it goes the best part of the fishing year is yet to come on naturals and I for one will look forward to that.

Spring....really

Well I had a good St Patricks Day with my two daughters, nice meal and a pint followed by watching Ireland win the Grand Slam, perfect.

I had arranged a friendly ''knock up'' on the Bristol Feeder Canal for the Sunday. Originally I had 12 but over the week it had dropped to 8 for all sorts of reasons. Looking at the weather forecast it suggested the Bristol area might not be too bad so I went to bed Saturday night with the hope of still running it.
A call of nature around 2 o'clock and a look out the window confirmed what the forecast had said....some light snow flurries but on the whole not too bad.
I woke up just before the alarm at 06:15 and was surprised how much had changed over the 4 hours.
Team mate Leigh text me to ask what it was like down my neck of the woods as he lives near Chippenham. I made the decision to cancel and sent a text out it as it was still coming down.

it was a good 5'' thick in North Somerset

Although disappointed everyone said I made the right decision.

I also saw from posts on Facebook that other local matches had been cancelled, namely the Commercial House Charity Match on the K & A Canal as well as the Gloucester Canal Championship. 

Over on my local Commercial Fishery, Acorn Lakes a few hardy soles did turn up for the Over 55's match.

photo from Cadbury Angling who also opened up, fair play.

Well its a tidy up day then for me, hope to get out Tuesday as well as try and re-arrange the Feeder Knock Up for next weekend.

Summerhayes 29th March and Acorn 4th April

Getting a bit behind with updates concerning my outings due to workload and family business resulting in a lack of energy but hopefully past that now altough I have a busy year ahead.

Summerhayes 29th March.

I took the plunge the other week and booked into the Summerhayes Fishery Open on Sunday 29th March, I knew it would be on Longs Lake so a chance of some of the 70 odd big bream they have stocked (4lb - 5lb fish). What I did not plan was to fish in a hurricane. I did have a chance to catch up with semi professional blogger Jamie Rich (Against men and Fish) and a regular at the venue.
Jamie has a fair bit of info on his blog concerning Summerhayes so I thought I would be as prepared as I could and I had been on the Fishery twice last year. I drew peg 39 which was the golden peg as well so no surprise that I ballsed it up.
I did fish the traditional micro and soft pellet approach about 10 meters out on a couple of lines but only had a few small skimmers and foul hooked a carp which spat the scale back at me. Down to my left near the big white sign with the Fishery number on it that you can see from the M5 motorway I fed a few wetted number 4's by hand and the noise did attract a few fish from under the sign very very late in the match and I managed to snare 4 of them giving me a combined total weight of just over 11lb and way (way) down the weights on the day. It was hard to concentrate and keep an eye on your gear throughout the 6 hours in the heavy winds which changed direction.
The results overall on the day were surprisingly good, Jamie has the full results (and he did ok himself) on his blog http://againstmenandfish.blogspot.co.uk/

Clevedon Open Saturday 4th April

Clevedon had a Club Match on Sellicks Lake at Summerhayes on the Easter Sunday, I could not fish due to a family gathering so booked in for the Clubs Open on Acorn which will be held every other Saturday now. 4 from the Team had booked in so we had a good presence within the 17 that entered and were well spread out over the 40 pegs avoiding a few pleasure anglers.
I don't know what it is about this lake but it appears to be very nice weather wise everywhere else until you arive here. A stiff breeze was around making presentation at distance a little difficult. I was on island peg 4 and Thyers Captain Lance Tucker on 2 so we had a fair bit of space. I had a decent skimmer after 10 minutes on soft pellet over micro at the botttom of the far shelf but that was it across for the whole match. A few more smaller samples in the middle came to the net but nothing to speak of.
Peg 5 was to my left and I had fed number 4's by catapult down towards the pallet. I fished banded 6mm or 8mm over this line after a couple of hours and managed a good run of carp, lost a few as well (foul hookers). Lance put a steady number of fish in his net throughout the day catching mainly across, not sure what he was using as hook bait but I suspect it was soft pellet as he had a nice net of silvers plus carp to win the match with 64lb. I done ok with just over 42lb for 6th on the day but felt as I should have won it had I tried the nearside earlier and at variance distances.
Team mate James Gunter was 2nd and another team mate Dom Sullivan was 3rd.
Results below and see Dom's view of the match on his blog http://caughtshortsullivan.blogspot.co.uk/

Undecided about this weekend ... Summerhayes?

Almost back to normal

Well I have finished my studies and taken 2 x 2 hour written exams and submitted a 3500 word assignment. The main question I keep asking myself is..... 'how the %&*£ did it all happen? You would think at 57 and after 35 years working for the same company I would be able to relax. Anyway job done, results in early June, hope I do not have to take a re-sit!

I don't think I have missed that much on the fishing front as its been bloody cold. I did manage a couple of hours fluff chucking on Barrow near Bristol but didn't get a pull, neither did the other 6 anglers who were there longer than me. After an intial stocking in early March they have backed off.

I did catch 4 mice though in the garage. I forgot I had left some bags of ground bait in my carryall instead of putting them away in a plastic container, they seemed to prefer the Sensas Magic as opposed the Noire. I had 2 on cheese and 2 on bread (bit like chub fishing).

Clevedon Club had another excellent turnout at the meeting just before Good Friday which is very encouraging as we have a lot to get on with, I think the future is bright.

Fellow blogger Jamie Rich has had a good run this winter and done exceptionally well down at Summerhayes, check his blog for more info I hope to go down there again later in the month.

http://againstmenandfish.blogspot.co.uk/

My mate Steve phoned me today to give me the final bill for the Ireland trip in mid Sept which we are really looking forward to, its a week after the World Pairs event in the waters around Cavan and Monaghan. We used to fish a lot around Bailieborough and Virgina especially Lough Ramour for the big hybrids, we also caught a lot of trout, not like this one though that was recently caught by a young Dublin angler fishing for pike with smelt, it weighed around 12lb. I have seen my feeder leave the water many times on this Lough as the trout jump once they have been hooked and they are all natural, no stocking.

I was hoping to fish a Clevedon Club Match on Apex this Sunday but my brother is not too well at the moment so will be flying over to N Ireland on Saturday coming back on the Monday night.

Well I hope to get out soon again and hopefully it will have warmed up as well.