Sunday 1st November - Bristol Commercial House League, Final Round K & A Canal, Claverton / Limpley Stoke nr. Bath

 5 days late with the blog due to managing to get away to Cornwall for a few nights before Lockdown 2 started so here is a summary of my last match.....

Glorious weather with a Bullfinch sat on a post, Cornwall's North Coast

The league managed to finish before the latest restrictions thanks to the great work done by Mike and Nicola Goodhind, Andy Britt and Vince Lunn. The staff at the Cadbury Heath Sports and Social Club were also outstanding allowing us to use their facilities within the guidelines. Team Thatchers and Bathampton performed the weighing in throughout which made life a little easier on the bank. 

I think overall Team Thatchers had one ''blow out'' during the series but it did not stop them topping the A Div table with 83 points, 16 points ahead of Bathampton A who had 67 and my Sensas Nomads Team relegated to B Div next year with 65 points.

In B Div it was a much closer finish with any of the teams capable of winning but in the end M & N Electrical came out top with 73 points followed by Midland Spinner with 72 and Bathampton B with 70.

Thatchers Paul Issac's had a great league ending up top in his team, biggest fish, top individual in the league and knock-Out winner.

Team mate Leigh Wakefield and I had a practice session on the Canal on the Wednesday prior to the match   trying different methods. Leigh concentrated on bread and I used ground bait and dead pinkie / caster / choppy / maggot.

Leigh had some quality roach and I had a real mixed bag on what would have been D section in the final match.

Chris Hook had to work on the Sunday so we brought in from the Red Corner ....Mark aka ''The Whippet'' Williams.

Going into the match we knew we could not win A Div but as we were 3 points ahead of Bathampton A hoped we could retain the lead and stay up. 

Sadly that didn't happen as already reported above. We had a few things that went wrong on the day.....

On the way to the canal from the draw Brian Melksham's van broke down and he was unable to fish despite some valiant effort's to get it going. Mark lost 2 decent fish which would have seen him win F Section at Limpley Stoke (he still finished 6th overall with 7lb plus), the end pegs in that section beat him. Sam in B Section had a terrible day (the whole section fished crap as it did last year) only able to catch tiny roach. I was in A Section, not too bad a peg but next to a boat that played loud and I mean loud music for 4 hours. I caught ok before they started up and then only adding the odd small fish to weigh 4lb 2oz, Tim Ford had 4lb 11oz and Andy Britt who I needed to beat had 7lb plus off the end peg. Leigh done ok in C section with 5lb 11oz and 2 points.

Leigh's 5lb 11oz

The only highlight (and that's a massive understatement) of the day was team mate Mike Withy winning the match from E section with a massive 32lb 12oz, yes you read that correctly, I believe it could be a record weight from the canal in this league.

Mike with his catch

So not our day ..but...2 individual match winners and we did smash it out of the park on one match.

Pleasure fishing now for a few weeks so will be giving the River Kenn a go this weekend, some Flyfishing at Chew and maybe take a look at the Bristol Feeder Canal.