Sunday 16th August - Evesham Festival Qualifier Warks Avon

 With nothing else on Sam and I decided to head back up to Evesham to try and qualify for one of the days over the BH Festival.

This would be my 3rd visit to the venue. I was part of the Nomads Squad back in mid January for a Team Qualifying match, the river was a bit out of sorts then but I did land a 2lb chub which gave me good points in the section but as a team we failed to qualify.

My next visit was last week when I fished the Veteran's match (over 60's) and this has already been reported on. 

Back to today......

I met Sam up at Weatherspoons in the town centre and went down for the rolling draw by the Ferry about 8:45. The draw process is as follows (payment to fish the match is done by the day before and on line), you line up and then pick your peg number which is on a disc turned upside down from a grid with letters across the top and numbers down the side. I was about a third the way down the line up and when it came to me to choose I picked A5 which turned out to be 41 only a few pegs down from where I was on the previous Wednesday. 

There had been a match on the Saturday but 41 was not in but 40 had weighed 4lb odd. The river today had a bit of pace on it after some rain overnight and a very slight tinge of colour.

Plenty of time to set up as the match was 12 - 5.

The peg did look nice but I got a varied and indifferent information from some of the regulars...... don't bother with the waggler, waste of time, just fish the maggot feeder for perch and eels....hmmmm.

I did set up a deep and shallow waggler, maggot feeder, stick float and short pole for worm on the inside at 5 -6 metres. 

This short pole line did seem clean while plumbing up but when it came to the all in and after bait dropping in worm and maggot and running through with a hook it was totally different. About 4 hooks lost in snags within the first 15 minutes. I did catch one perch before giving up on the line.

Local angler Howard Kaye who wasn't fishing came behind me a suggested I fish the waggler over depth 3/4 the way over as the hybrids may feed.

I went on this line feeding maggots every run through as well as feeding another line about 13 metres out.

Howard came back after 30 minutes and said the guy up on 35 had some good chub already. By this time I had a few small roach and dace. He said stick with it.

A look on the stick float line now and then brought nothing but I kept feeding it.

I was adding the odd small chub, roach and bleak on the deep waggler but 2 hours in I hit something much bigger. I did think it was a chub but soon saw it was a good hybrid about 1lb. 

More bites followed from small fish and I had a few razor blade pommies but at least I was putting something in the net.

I had another 2 hybrids which were smaller than the first one at around 8oz each plus some 4 oz perch.

At the ''all out'' I felt I had fished a good match but had no ideal how I done in the section as I couldn't see anyone else.

Turned out I was equal 1st in the section with 4-7, one more small roach or chublet would have done it and perhaps I should have gone on the maggot feeder which could have attracted more hybrids. Still a pick up on my 3rd visit.

Leigh Gardner won the match easily with 21lb plus of skimmers and hybrids caught on a small ground bait feeder from peg 45. 

Leigh Gardner

Darren Fisher who was on peg 35 ended up 2nd with 15lb plus of chub on the waggler.

Back up again tomorrow (Wednesday 19th) for the last qualifier.