Sunday 18th August - pleasure session Crane Section Bristol Avon

I have made myself available to fish for Cadbury Angling in the Commercial House League this Autumn / Winter, there will be 4 matches on the Bristol Avon and 2 on the Kennet and Avon Canal, it remains to be seen if I get the call up for all or just a few of the matches. The first match is on the Crane and Jack Whites sections of the Bristol Avon near Keynsham, the stretch is controlled by the Bristol and West of England Federation, Clevedon is a memeber Club so I had access to it for free.There was an Inter Club up at the Swineford end today but would not come down as far as where I wanted to fish.I had intended to fish the middle of the Crane but after an hour or more walking up and down the bank and dismantling the trolley 3 times I could not get a decent swim as they had all grown over, I did try hacking a couple out but by the time I got to the waters edge I was still too high off the bank so I ended up walking all the way back down and found a comfortable swim just opposite the old Soap Works where there is now a boatyard and a whole community living on barges.

This is where I ended up very comfortable.

I have fished in and around this peg before but many years ago and had good bags of roach on the pole. So the pole was set up at 13 meters which reached the middle of the river and the main flow, rather than use a pole float I set up a crow quill, 10BB and a No.6, hook size 8 mirco barb and the rig was just tripping bottom at 12 feet. I mixed up a kilo of Noire and a kilo of brown crumb, a nice sticky mixed for when hemp and caster is added stays together quite good and does not break up on the way down. That was it, 'simples' I put 4 balls in via the pole cup just in case it would be hard, first trot down with red maggot, float buried and a 4 oz chublet was swung in, this patteren repeated itself for the next 5 or 6 trots the went quiet. 2 more balls went in and the bites starts coming again but I was getting bitted out with bleak. I had the odd fish over the next hour but nothing big. I went for hemp on the hook and immediately had a roach about 4 oz and then a few more. A guy came up to me and asked if I had seen a bank stick as he thought he left it behind last Friday, 'no mate' but how did you get on, 'lots of roach on hemp and tares' I knew I sould have brought tares. I tried double caster and did get lots of bites resulting in some roach but mainly chublets. At around 2 o'clock I was starting to get a steady stream of small fish then as I was bringing one in, a pike from the deep grapped it, didn't think 6 elastic could stretch that far on a match top 3 but it did, eventually it let go. Over the next 2 hours I counted 8 takes by pike inbetween landing the odd fish. I did manage to land one, some how the 18 hook found it's way into the side of its mouth so it could not bite the line. I had a cracking day, lots of bites, the excitement of the pike and on a river that I absolutley love.

A walker kindly took this pic of the catch as I was packing up. Overall I had around 8 lbs of bits and the pike was approx 5lb ish.

The pike that did not get away.

Not sure what I am doing next weekend, unlikely that I will fish the Monday match at Acorn, I also have some builders in this week so may have to clear up after them but we'll see.