Ivan's Angle: Sunday 6th March - Lower Bristol Avon Champs, Newbridge to Saltford

Sunday, 6 March 2022

Sunday 6th March - Lower Bristol Avon Champs, Newbridge to Saltford

Ben Rendall and his mates organised this annual end of River Season match and advertised it some weeks ago. A few of us Sensas Nomads team members quickly booked in which was a good move as Ben ended up with a reserve list as originally there were only 40 pegs but he managed to extend it to 45.

It is a popular match as there is the potential to land on quite a few bream prior to them spawning (if you are on the right peg of course).

Sam Johnson, Chris Hook and I met in McDonalds at 7, it's been a while since we did that together as there have been no matches on the river for a few months.

I was going to try out some new Sensas Bream ground bait given to me by Matt Parsons at M5 mixed in with a bit of Bream 3000. The new ground bait has small bits of red and yellow pastoncino which is a very sweet biscuit mix.

I also had 5 boxes of Sensas ground bait for Ben who fishes for Nomads on the Wye.

The draw was at 08:00 in the Globe Inn Car Pk which is halfway between Keynsham and Bath so nice and handy for the two access points to the river.

Pegging today was as follows.....

1-5 little field
6-10 pumphouse
11-15 start of straight
16-20 straight
21-25 bend upto permanent peg 50
26-30 ends on permanent peg 61
31-35 newton St loe bridge downstream 70s
36-45 trees permanent 116-138

The draw got under way and I was about halfway down the queue. I pulled out peg 1 plus scales and board! Definitely not the area to draw as above Newbridge is too shallow this time of year for the bream especially after a few cold nights and the river would be much faster as well. So fishing for the Section it was. Chris was at the top of the straight, Sam was down in the tree's an area I fancied.

In my Section of 5 I had, me peg 1, Rich Lacey peg 2, Mike Shellard peg 3, peg 4 unsure who the angler was and on the end Paul Purchase, so a pretty good line up of river anglers.

My peg looked ok to be honest, the pace was ok, a bit of colour and comfortable.

Fairly simple set up today which was a 30 gram ground bait feeder for down the middle, 4 gram bolo for a rod length out (16 foot rod) and a straight lead or maggot feeder for down the nearside over the bolo line.

Worm, caster, maggot, dead red and pinkie on the tray.

Fishing today was 1030 - 1600

I put 5 big jaffa's down the middle at the start and a couple of smaller balls of Sensas gardons noire in on the bolo line. I started off on the bolo hoping to get a few roach. Well 20 minutes in not a bite despite loose feeding maggot but gave it another 10 minutes as I could trot quite a way down the peg and felt sure I would get a few, I didn't so that gear went up the bank and it was out down the middle with the feeder.

Just before the first hour was up Rich below me came for a walk, he told me no one in the section had a bite.

I was putting bait in on the feeder every 5 minutes and at precisely 1200 I had 2 little knocks and a drop back. I hit it and felt a bream on the end. It was a good fish and fought hard in the current. It was a relief to net it. A good fish about 5 pounds.

I had just chucked out again when Sam rang me. He had caught a few small roach and said Chris had pulled out of a bream.

Rich came up for another walk and I told him I had a bream, he said Paul on the end had bumped one but also caught one as well. A few about I thought?

It would be pleasing to say I caught more but did not have another bite. Rich below me didn't have a bite, Mike on 3 had a small roach but didn't see the bite, peg 4 had a couple of roach and Paul didn't have another bite either after his bream.

Only Paul and I weighed in for obvious reasons, I weighed Paul first and his fish went 5lb 1oz.