Kev Dicks was in charge of proceedings today and got the open draw well under way by 08:30 with fishing 11:00 - 16:00.
In the draw due I was fairly near the front and was pleased when I drew peg 24 just downstream of the Pump House at Newbridge. Team mate Lewis Walker was on this peg last year and had 12lb odd off it to win his Section. He caught chub across on the waggler. The peg is known to have form and you can get into the water which is a bonus.
Calum, Lewis and Nigel where in the trees, Chris was on 7 in the little field and Rob was past me in the 30's down the straight.
Looking at the river when I parked up it was barely moving, it was overcast with some drizzle which was forecast to change to bright sunshine later on.
It was only a short walk to the peg (makes a change) and it did look nice. I had 2 hours to set up so no rush.
26 was the next peg in below me and Kev Dicks was on this, he knows the Newbridge Section better than most.
There was only a slight breeze so I set up a 4AA waggler to fish at around 3 foot hoping to spray maggot over the top and right over to the far bank cover. The tip was set up to fish the same line with a Bob Nudd 'window feeder'. Finally just one pole rig with a 1.5 grm float, the depth was just under top 4 at 11 meters. I was going to set up a shallow rig but decided to keep it simple.
lovely peg
The 11:00 'all in' soon came around and on the shout I put in 9 big gaffa's laced with hemp and caster plus some left over squats from last week. The mix was just River and Gross Gardon's.
A few chucks with the feeder put some caster and hemp in on the far side.
As expected first run down with the float it buried and a small roach was swung to hand, this pattern was repeated for about 20 minutes before I started loose feeding hemp over the top of the ground bait with the odd caster included. The stamp of roach got slightly better with a few net fish. I knew I was doing OK by the end of the first hour so kept going with the feed as the bites tend to tail off toward the end of the first 90 minutes to the end of the second hour. I was surprised to get a few chublets at around 8ozs and then a few decent perch in-between more roach.
It was a lovely bit of fishing and I was happy with the presentation and the rig. Approx 90 minutes in I could see Kev was now on the tip but decided to remain on the pole until the bite dried up completely.
Just after 2.5 hours it did dry up. I could only get the odd bite right at the end of the trot and usually was a small perch. The wind also got up and it was difficult to hold the pole so it was time to try the far side. The waggler was out of the question due to the strong upstream wind so the tip it was.
I bought some window feeders for Ireland so this was their first outing. The fly like a bullet so were perfect for hitting the target in the strong wind. I got a couple of knock first cast but missed the bite as I had not got the rods position quite right in the wind. A few casts later and more missed taps on the tip I sorted it and connected with a roach of around 6ozs. More decent bites followed and I started to get a few chublet's around 8ozs. I kept casting regular and connected with some better fish loosing two of them in a snag.
At 15:00 and with an hour to go the bites dried up and I lost another good fish but was fairly happy with my day.
I had the scales so walked down to 52 first and then back on myself.
The Section was tight with an average of around 7lb per angler prior to me weighing in.
Chuffed to win the Section while in the company of some good anglers.
My Section winning bag.
Back at the results most of the team had done OK.
Chris had 6lb odd, Calum 19lb plus, Lewis 17lb 14oz, me with 17lb 10oz, Nigel and rob struggled.
Calum also picked up his section but by default.
Lobby's Andy Richings won the the day with 11 bream for 53lb , Mark Leader was second with 39lb, Mark Bromsgrove third with 34lb and Lance Tucker fourth with 31lb, they were all in the same Section.
Overall in our team we had a 6th, 7th and 8th.
Pleasure session on the River Kenn this week then back to Newbridge on Sunday.
No comments:
Post a Comment