August update.

Hello once again.

Well the big day on the River Trent for the Division 1 National has come and gone. I will get straight to the point and say I had a bad match. I weighed in a massive 600 grams, which was very poor considering that the anglers around me all caught over 2 kilos, so I should have done a lot better. I felt a bit dejected at the end of the match, however I was a bit surprised to find I got 29 points for that weight, which is not far off half way in the section of 67. I think the team finished 29th with Martin Griffiths finishing second in his section and we had no blanks which some teams did suffer from. We did have a couple of bad results similar to mine, otherwise we could have finished much stronger.

I was drawn on H section on the tidal river at Besthorpe on peg 64, which was permament peg 56 on the Scunthorpe AA water. This put me on the inside of a bend and the section was double pegged so I had plenty of room between myself and the next angler. After chatting with the stewards they told me I was upstream of a noted barbel peg (57) and with a downstream wind I would also be better off fishing a waggler than a stick float. So therefore I only set up a feeder rod with heavy line and hooklengths for trying to catch barbel and a waggler rod for fishing down the middle of the river with maggots.

I started on the maggot feeder with 3 maggots on the hook hoping to get a barbel whilst feeding hemp and maggots down the middle of the river. I only caught a small dace on the feeder in the first half an hour, so I started running the waggler down the swim. It was very slow with not many bites. I tried altering the depth to see at what depth I could locate some fish at. After a while I started to get odd fish fishing around 6 foot deep. However I was also bumping fish off on the strike, which began to annoy me. Although at least I knew there were some fish in the peg, so I kept plugging away. After a couple of hours it started raining and the bites began to tail off. I think that the rain pushed the fish down in the water coulmn and after that I struggled to catch at all on the float. So I spent the last hour on the feeder, however I only snared a couple of dace. In all I ended up with only 10 fish. The angler downstream of me fished on the pole and caught more fish and a couple of better stamp ones. I knew at the beginning of the match that I should have also set a pole up. So I was dissapointed that I did not have everything covered. I decided to fish how I was most comfortable.

On reflection this match showed that I did not have a great deal of experience at the different varieties of fishing required for a match on the River Trent as big as a Division 1 National. I just have not got enough hours behind me. Although I did enjoy fishing the river as it was more challenging, and hopefully I have learned a bit more.

Also in August a group of us from POHAS made our way to Bewdley for a weeks fishing on the annual club outing. This was the week leading up to the National so I wanted to fish the river as much as possible, however the river conditions were low and clear and the fishing was very poor. On my 3 trips to the river I did not catch 1 barbel and only caught perch and dace. The highlight of the river trips was a Robin that took an interest in my maggots and halibut pellets whilst on the river one day. (see pic above) It was just bad luck I suppose. The fisheries in the area were very good and my 2 trips to Solhampton saw lots of fish caught by everyone.

After the national I decided to have a bit of a break from fishing in order to have a rest from getting up early etc. So now into September I have got a couple of winter leagues to look forward too and I have also entered a series of matches on the River Severn at Shrewsbury, which will hopefully be better fishing than on some of the Trent sections. I must have caught the river bug.

Tight lines.