While I had been away in Singapore and NZ the club had held a couple of matches on the river and although not big weights some bream and tench had been caught. I was going to fish the river on Wednesday but decided to give it an extra day to recover from the recent hard frosts.
The forecast for Thursday was good with high tide in the early hours of the morning meaning that the river would be flowing the right way all day.
I headed over to Cadbury Angling just before 9 a.m. to top up with red maggot as this was all I intended to fish with in conjunction with the waggler.
I was on the bank upstream of Strode Rd bridge in Clevedon by 9:30 and decided to fish the 3rd peg up were I had over 50lb of tench, roach and hybrids last February. To fish it properly at this time of year you need to get down in the mud as the EA drop the level about 6 foot from December through to the end of March.
I simply set up a bait waiter on a bank stick for the bait and odds and ends to save climbing back up the bank, the keepnet to be used as a rod rest with another rod rest set up back from it to keep the rod out of the water and my landing net, simples. The mud was deep close to the bank but firmer a bit further out.
I set up 2 waggler rods, both with 3AA floats, one had a wide gape 18 to 0.10 and the other with the same hook but to 0.12. Plumbing up with a SSG I had 3 foot down the middle and 2.5 foot just off the far shelf.
As I şet up fellow Clevedon Club member Chris Ford came along. Chris probably fishes the river more than anyone and said a few fish had been coming out but not many. He was going down below the bridge to just fish with bread.
I started across just off the far shelf and loose fed a half pouch of maggot every other run through. The flow was spot on but even though I was holding back a little it was still dragging under now and then due the uneven bottom. I perceived and did strike everytime the float dipped.
30 minutes in one of those strikes met with solid resistance and that lovely thumping feeling when a decent fish is hooked in running water.
I played it carefully and when it first came to the surface I thought it was a massive roach, I had 2 over 2lb from the same swim last year. Even when I netted it I had to check. It was a hybrid but more roach in it than bream, a nice fish going 3lb.
I started to feed about 10 maggots every cast after that and soon had another one but more scaley and bream like compared to the earlier one, I was enjoying this.
I had been hand feeding the middle now and then and decided to have a look with the other rod, first trot down and a perch of around 1.5 lbs was hooked and landed, I lost another straight after so rested the like and went back across.
I adjusted the rig by taking the No.10 shot of the hook length and putting it above. This worked much better and the float dragged under less.
Well by getting the feeding right and swapping between the 2 lines I added 5 more decent perch, another hybrid, a small jack pike and 2 tench best one going 5lbs.
what a fantastic day
Chris below had 4 bream and a small carp on the bread, his best bream went 7lbs 10oz.
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