Sunday 16th, Monday 17th and Wednesday 19th - its all go

Well the Glorious 16th came and it was good to get back on a River.....well its called a river but some would argue that its simply a drain and I guess they are right.... yes the Huntspill. I met up with team mate Chris Hook on the bank as we have a couple of Super League matches coming up so thought we would go and have a look. Former Maver team mate Sean Partridge was also going but he was getting there at 04:30 .. feck that I thought. Chris was also going early ish so said I would meet him down there.
We fished below the Pump House at Woolavington Bridge. I got there around 07:30 and walked down. a couple of anglers were in the early pegs but had only the odd bream. When I came to Sean he had 2 and was getting a lot of liners but he had put in 30 odd balls across and he was on a noted peg. 2 pegs down was Chris who hadn't had any yet but had just finished setting up. I went 3 pegs below Chris.
Some of the Diana Gordon League guys also came down and went below me but where we settled won't be in when the match is on.
Sean ended up with 25 bream, Chris 6 and I 3 plus a load of rudd and roach fishing the waggler.

Monday night with the wife on lates I went for a few hours on Barrow Tanks fluff chucking and had 5, kept 1.

Wednesday saw me head to Staverton near Trowbridge on the Bristol Avon for the Wednesday Open. These are great matches starting with the draw at 14:00 and fishing 15:00 - 20:00 up until the end of August. You can drive to your peg and park behind it. If you get into double figures you are likely to frame with 7lb winning a section. It's a lovely bit of water with roach later on but early season its mainly chub.

My luck at the draw bag has not been that good lately and I put it down to seeing one solitary magpie when out with my dog but the night before the match I saw 2 (those who don't know what I am on about the old wives tale goes ...one for sorrow ... one for joy).

Not a bad turn out, I counted around 16 / 17 and it was pegged from the bottom meadow to halfway up (there are 70 plus pegs) so plenty of room.

The peg cards were thrown up in the air and two landed at my feet so picked one up. It was peg 29 which is a decent peg if the chub play ball and there are some real animals who live there.

I set up 2 waggler rods, one at full depth (6 foot ish and one at half depth) with 0.11 power hook lengths, the shallow wag had a B611 16 and the other a Drennan forged wide gape 18 so plenty of power for the big boys. I also set up the pole to fish at 11 metres but tbh it was a waste of time so no more about that.

Starting off on the shallow wag feeding maggot across I was in to chublet's immediately biggest initially was 6 oz. I stayed shallow for the first 2 hours and was gradually putting a weight together and added a few chub around the 1lb mark. it went a bit quiet so picked up the full depth rig and had another couple of better fish. The middle part of the match went a bit quiet but by chopping and changing and keeping the feed going in I managed to added more chublet's with a better one coming 2 minutes before the all out.

The scales came up and the best weight below me was 10lb, the angler immediately below me on 31 had about 3lb, I weighed 12lb 6oz but was beaten by peg 42 who had 17lb of chub.

Still 2nd place and £40 so happy days and it was a long overdue result, hope them 2 magpies stay around.

Back on the Huntspill on Sunday for an Open, photo shoot with Anglers Mail on Tuesday on the Kenn and back to Staverton next Wednesday.