Sunday 8th March - Evesham Festival Team Qualifier, Warwickshire Avon

A call was put out some time ago to my fellow Team mates asking if anyone was interested in fishing this qualifier. I put my name forward but said I was happy not to be selected if anyone who was an Evesham regular wanted to fish. Never seen the venue before and from what I know its quite tricky.

It turned out no one else fancied it so I ended up going to loose my Evesham virginity!

A couple of conversations with Mike and Sam saw me do quite a lot of prep as depending where you draw you need a range of methods at your disposal.

The kit I prepped and took up was....
Pole, and a range of float options from 1.5 gram up to 6 gram, a few flat floats up to 6 gram as well.
Long rod with an array of bolo and avon floats.
Stick float rod x 2 and stick floats
Feeder rods x 2

Team today was ....
Clive Branson (c)
Mike Martin-Davies
Chris Smith
Sam Johnson
Me

16 Teams of 5 were booked in but a team dropped out on the Friday evening for some reason. The top 5 would qualify for the August BH weekend team festival match. This would also be my biggest match in terms of numbers since last September and there was certainly going to be plenty of talent on the bank.

There was a match on the Saturday and it threw up a few 9lb and 8lb weights and was probably the first proper match on the venue this year due to the floods.

I followed Sam up the M5 and then off to Evesham where we stopped at the Town Bridge to have a look at the condition of the river, this was a shallow area ad it was paced but ok.
On to Weatherspoons for breakfast and met up with Clive and Mike.

There was a rolling draw at Hampton Ferry from 09:00 and fishing 11 - 4. We were last to draw and it didn't appear to be very good according to Clive and Mike.

I ended up on peg 45 which I could walk to from the car park. I was told it was a shallow ish area and a range of options were advised, ended up taking everything but the walk was on a hard path, you couldn't drive to the peg due to the soft ground.

Sam was dead opposite where we parked up, peg 63, a much deeper area and apparently can chuck up some bream, it did look nice and he was well please as he had qualified for a match before from this area.

Clive was on 79 and he did fancy his peg. Mike was down in the town on 29 an area he knew and Chris also in the town on peg 9.

When I got to my peg it was quite pacey from about 11 metres out. Plumbing up straight in front at about 8 metres I had about 7 foot but then as I went left downstream it shallowed up. An overweighted 6 gram flat float was set up to fish straight out in front with maggot or worm and a 5 gram bodied float to run down the peg a bit more toward a nearside bush. A DH 7 x no. 4 stick was put on the long rod in order to ease over the shallow bit toward the end of the run on the inside. 45 gram feeder for the middle and a small 30 gram cage for the inside.

There was a discussion about taking bread the evening before the match as we believed that's what won the match on the Saturday so luckily I had some liqqy in the freezer,

The plan was to try the bread for the first 20 minutes or so and I did that using the cage feeder down the inside with a 6mm punch. Most others around me were lobbing out the feeder in the middle.
20 minutes gone not a touch so continued with the bread in the feeder but put a fluro maggot on the wide gape 18 hook. I had a little rattle and struck but the pinkie came back ragged, prob a bleak or small roach. I had another knock on this quite quickly but did not connect with anything when I hit it.

It gave me a bit of confidence that there were fish to be caught and I was aware you would not need much for decent points.
An hour went by and no more indications.

I put a couple of hard balls of GB in on the same line (river and gros gardons plus a little leam) with choppy and pinkie before going out on the 45 grammer down the middle. 30 minutes or so went by and no indications, I couldn't see anything being caught either side of me. I came in on the inside feeder line again with just a few pinkies in the GB and one on the hook and had a positive knock which I hit. It was a decent fish and was really please to land what looked like a 2lb chub so possibly mega points for the team, I was buzzing.
Sam rang me and said all he had was a few little roach and bleak.

As the match went on I had a look on the pole and running line rigs but it wasn't right so went back on the 2 feeder lines. Sam rang to see if I had anymore which I hadn't but told me he just had a small tench!!

I missed another bite while a guy stopped behind me talking which I wasn't very happy about, he fooked off after that.

The angler above me then netted a small chub from the middle so I had a go on this line for quite a while .... nothing.

With an hour to go I gave Sam a call and he only had another tench, a better one this time, unbelievable but fantastic.

15 minutes or so from the end the angler above me had another chub, I did not add anything more to my solitary chub.

And.....that was it, match over.

In the end my section of 15 fished poor, my chub went 2lb 3oz which got me 11 points from 15 so team job done. Sam weighed 6lb 10oz to take 12 points from 15 being beaten by bream weights in the meadow in front of the Cafe.
Chris done the next best with 6 points and Mike 4 pants from a snag pit. Clive blanked which shows how hard it was, the draw gods were not good.

We finished 12th from 15 so missed out on the BH festival match this time.

Full results and weights below.

Well done to DGL who had a great result.

Hope to pleasure fish my local river on Wednesday and then Port Talbot Docks on Sunday.