That’s certainly been the case so far

My first month has been difficult to say the least with most venues I’ve been to suffering from “feast or famine syndrome”. On paper many of the match results look good but what the overall results don’t show is that a lot of competitors are struggling to catch. When a new season starts I think a lot of us sometimes expect too much. That’s certainly been the case so far. My season kicked off with a Wednesday open at Heyford, practising for the Drennan Superleague final. With the carp still in spawning mode (after June 16th note) it was a struggle for most of us. I drew peg 77, four swims up from one of the noted bridge swims and toiled at sixteen metres for five hours for 15.6.0. This included an eight pound ghostie plus some small carp and a few orfe. It was apparent on this match that to do any good you needed to be on a swim with plenty of far bank vegetation as these were the type of swims the carp were spawning in. On the end peg, team mate Hadrian Whittle put just over forty pounds of carp onto the scales for first place. We hadn’t really learned a lot other than it’s difficult to catch a lot of carp when they are spawningbut we already knew that! We would definitely need some more visits if we were to do any good in the final against the teams we were competing against in the final. Next day I was hard at it in the garage making up rigs for the Kamasan British open at Twyford Farm on the Warwickshire Avon. Bloodworm was to be allowed on this event and after the practise sessions at Evesham last summer I felt confident of getting a good result if I could get a decent draw. Deep down though I didn’t really expect bloodworm fish to win the match, as results on this stretch of the Avon nowadays are normally dominated by bream or barbel. How times have changed. Ten years ago the stretch was one of my favourite venues and although big fish used to prevail then as well, it was also possible to frame regularly with roach. I enjoyed some wonderful matches there and I sincerely hope that one day it will return to it’s former self. With the match only three days into the new season there wasn’t really time for the stretch to be hammered too much, so for me it was hope for a big fish peg first then a good bloodworm peg second. Come match day I didn’t get either! My draw put me two pegs below the bridge at Wilmot’s and effectively out of the race. The section steward for the day didn’t give me too much hope when he told me he’d fished the same peg on the Wednesday evening and struggled for a few bits. My only hope was if I could get the bloodworm to work. The swim was actually very nice to fish, albeit lacking in fish. At the start of the match I introduced ten big balls of groundbait containing about half a kilo of joker. My mix was three kilos of my own Roach mix with two kilos of damp leam, a perfect mix for this type of fishing as it goes down quickly but also breaks up quickly as well. I used a one gram float set just at depth and began by catching small roach immediately. It didn’t last long though and despite going through the card with feed patterns I couldn’t keep the fish coming. My back up method was to be laying with strong pole tackle for big fish like tench and maybe an odd bream. Angling the pole downstream I found around eleven foot of water just out from nearside weed growth which looked very fishy. I fed chopped worm and caster in a bait dropper in this swim but only managed a couple of small perch on worm. Back on the long pole it was a case of catch a few tiny roach then no bites, very disappointing. As the match went away it was apparent that a bloodworm approach on a peg like the one that I drew can end up being more negative than positive because if it doesn’t work there’s no turning back and the damage is done. I honestly believe I’d have stood more chance on the day by fishing a running line with caster or maggot. A big four pound weight of bream won my section and that was probably achievable by fishing “old style approach” with waggler and stick floats. There’s only so much you can do in five hours though and it’s impossible to fit in all the permutations. It was though another lesson learned regarding the use or not of bloodworm on the river. It will obviously be difficult to draw too many conclusions though as we don’t get that many chances to use it. The John Smith’s festival at Evesham could be interesting this year though, despite bloodworm being banned. On the same day as the Kamasan final team mate Steve Ashmore was winning a qualifier with fifteen pounds of roach on hemp at peg one on the Town waters. Back at Wilmot’s I finished with 3.3.0 of small fish and won nothing. As I expected, big fish ruled the day and Jon Jowett of Sensas Garbolino took first place with 20.9.0 of bream from peg 17 on the noted island section. Bream also featured in the second and third weights from Lee Harrison with 15.4.0 at peg 19 and Paul Udell with 12.1.0 on Wilmot’s peg 2. The best bloodworm catch went to Kim Milsom, a man who is due ten years of bad draws at some stage if the good and bad theory is correct, with eleven pounds of roach from noted peg three on the island. Generally I think the match was a success and it would be nice to see the venue used for more major events, especially team events in the future.The day after the British open I was looking forward to my first visit of the season to one of my favourite venues, Earlswood lakes. The weights here this season so far have been very impressive with up to fifty pounds of bream winning some matches. I was reasonably happy when I drew peg 126, until someone told me there had been loads of dry nets in this area the previous day. At Earlswood though that doesn’t mean too much as it’s often a case of fish moving into baited pegs overnight and big weights then coming from areas that were devoid twenty four hours previous. It didn’t happen this time though as the venue fished really hard for most. Along with a lot of other good anglers I never had a bite in five hours whilst on the Engine house dam wall Alun Phillips was taking bream and our pools money whilst amassing a 28.2.0 winning haul of fish up to four pounds. The pegs in the one thirties also produced but from what I was told the best weight on the Yacht lake was only five pounds. Then a week later it produced a fifty pound winning weight! That’s bream fishing I suppose. Three days after this I attended the Frank Barlow memorial match on the Trent at Long Higgin. I enjoyed some great times with Frank whilst we were both in the same Shakespeare team in the eighties and it was good to see such a good turn out in his memory on a Wednesday match. Seventy seven of us competed this one but most really struggled to catch much at all with the river low and clear. I drew peg two on Manvers and had 4.8.0 of small skimmers and perch on the feeder but the match went to Alex Dobie of Trentmen with 26.1.8 of bream from peg 34 on Manvers. Second spot went to Arthur Benstead from Pontefract with 19.5.0 of chub from peg 13. The match was used by many as a practise for the forthcoming Drennan Superleague final first leg but a lot had packed up well before the end. I must admit as the day went on my mind drifted back to some of the good times I shared with Frank which is what these matches should be about. Three days later we were back at Higgin for an official team practise on pegs thirteen to thirty five. To say it was hard would be an understatement as we all struggled to catch much at all on feeder or pole. Clearly this was a bad area as bites were at a premium all day, the exception being Nathan Hughes at peg thirteen on the chub which were still feeding. It was difficult to formulate any kind of team plan as the venue was fishing so hard. Ultimately it would be a match where either feeder or pole were the methods, and it would be up to the individual to sort it out on the day we felt. Our final team practise at Heyford was another patchy affair as we fished pegs 74 to the mid nineties. I fished peg 86 and took about ten pounds of small fish but things were looking grim generally. We found that the usual chopped worm approach wasn’t working anywhere near as well as in previous years and some of the team fared better using meat or caster on the hook. Instead of the usual twelves and fourteens we caught better using sixteens and eighteens but it was important to think carefully about line strength as too light a line meant disaster. Most of us used the new Carptek line in diameters from 0.14mm to 0.18mm. Elastics ranged from ten to sixteen but I found a M.A.P number twelve or fourteen was about right through two power sections of Garbolino Renaissance. The final weekend soon came around and we were all a little surprised to see the Trent carrying extra water after heavy rain the previous evening. The river had also coloured up a bit and it was now going to be interesting to see whether it would turn into a feeder or pole match. We’d planned on a mainly feeder assault and by the time we realised Essex were catching on the pole it was too late to catch up. Really we got caught between two stations but it’s difficult to switch tactics mid match and expect to win. Our peg one draw didn’t do us too many favours in some sections and in the bottom section I was never going to really compete with the pegs down below. Three people caught bream in my section and by the end my 2.13.0 was only good enough for sixth place in the section. As the results came in, it was apparent we’d had a very bad day one and were out of it. Essex had mastered the conditions perfectly and took top spot with 50 points ahead of Trentmen 46 and Highfield 41. Barnsley came in fourth on 38, with us fifth on 32. Thatchers were sixth and Dublin seventh. Individual winner was Kevin Baxter at the downstream end peg with 17.4.8 of bream. We were too many points behind now to do any good and even a good day two would not be enough to make an impression on the leaders. It was now a three horse race between Essex, Trentmen and Highfield.

Joe Roberts did our day two draw and I was a little dismayed when he gave me peg 70. I’d got two noted bridge pegs in my section and I was up against it. The match was fished from twelve until five and at half past two I’d got about a pound of small fish in the net. Sat there biteless at sixteen metres is not my idea of fun and I was just starting to think about how cruel this sport can be when I took a carp of around three pounds. In the next half an hour I had three more and a tench late on gave me a 15.10.0 total which put me third in the section. Highfield took the match apart on day two finishing well clear on 49 points. Then came Trentmen on 42, Essex and Thatchers on 37 and Barnsley and ourselves on 35.Overall that meant Highfield were champions again on 90 points ahead of Trentmen on 88, Essex 87, Barnsley 73, Starlets 67, Thatchers 65 and Dublin 35. It had been a magnificent performance by Highfield, especially on day two and well done to them on a memorable and well deserved victory. They even managed the individual winner with form man Stu Conroy taking 58.5.0 at form peg 113. Next month I’ll tell you how the Home International in Scotland went. It promises to be a real battle between the four Home nations and we’re all really looking forward to it.