Sunday 10th November - Poppy Match Bristol Avon, Newbridge and Crane

A busy Saturday and not getting to bed until 1a.m. was not the best way to prepare for this match, luckily I did prepare my gear Friday night as the wife was working until 10 p.m. The draw was at 8 o'clock so getting there by 7:30 was a must in order to park, register, sort out pools and have a breakie. I arrived in good time and met up with Steve Vernon who I go to Ireland with, hardened river anglers gradually drifted in and the rugby club was soon full. Ray Blazely was the main organiser (he has the right voice for a match like this and... people respond which is what you need). I also shook hands with Tim Ford, fellow blogger and 5 times winner of this match which is one of the biggest in the SW. Anglers across the West Country and South Wales support this very worthwhile cause. So after buying £5 worth of raffle tickets and paying £5 for the ticket that was my contribution, £10 in all to the charity. £15 in pools were also duly paid. The line up for the draw was on time but before it took place Bill Knight of the Kingswood and Hanham Royal British Legion read out the citation and we had 2 mins silence. I believe all 120 tickets were sold but not everyone turned up due to the rain we had towards the end of the week and all day Saturday.
At the draw I pulled out Peg 21 at Newbridge, also copped for the scales. Wasn't sure where this would be as the pegging was different to the permanent pegs. Access was good as you can drive down to the river and park up, its a flat walk then. I arrived at my peg by 8:40 so plenty of time to set up for a 10:15 start. I was on Newbridge straight and permanet peg 38, not great even when the river is spot on. The river wasn't up that high but very pacey and there was little or not slack in my peg.
The next peg down was extremly close, I hardly ever moan about pegging and to be honest it would not have made any difference on the day but give the amount of river we had there was not need to peg that close.

My peg up on the bank, next anglers gear can be seen the other side of the bush, the following pic shows it better, I could see his pole tip through the bush to the left.

The peg was up on the bank about 5 feet but I did manage to stand on a piece of bank sticking out lower down after breaking up some dead nettle stalks to stand on and prevent me from slipping in!

Two feeder rods were set up, 35g open ender and a straight lead, I also set up a 5g pole rig to fish at 6 meters. Groundbait was 3 kilos of Sensas Magic, Noire and brown crumb with plenty of caster and hemp mixed in.

On the whistle I balled in 5 babies heads at 6 meters and a couple in mid river. First hour I spent down the middle, not a touch and plenty of leaves etc snagging on the line. I switched to the pole to have a look but to be honest it was too pacy and with such a short trot pointless so that went up the bank. Out with the striaght lead on the pole line and after an hour had a knock but missed it. Next cast same again and a 1oz roach was swung in. Nothing more so back out in the middle, still nothing. Bank walkers were saying the same thing everyone up this end was struggling with just the odd small roach. At 12:30 I decided to stick with the striaght lead down to the bush using pinkie on an 18. In the end I had 4 roach, a gudeon and a perch. My neighbour downstream had 2 x 1 oz roach. The section was won with 3lb 12oz 8 drms. As you can see from the Section results below it was hard.

The better weights as you can see came from the bottom end of the section where there were bends in the river creating some slack water.

Prior to the draw I said to Tim Ford low double figures would win it, he agreed. The match was won by seasoned river angler Jerry Pocock with 11lb odd, there were a few 9lb weights following.

See Tim Ford blog for the full results and his view of the match  http://cluckerspeg.blogspot.co.uk/

Over £1000 was raised on the day which is brilliant. Ray Blazely and Team done a great job so well done guys.