Monday 2 February 2009

Bathampton AA Open Match on the K&A

It was only the fact that the K&A has been in good form that I was able to summon up the necessary enthusiam to get out of bed at 6:30am on Sunday morning. The weather forecast was for a very cold day with Siberian winds not conducive to sitting on the bank! Still a decent breakfast in the White Lion set me up and as I stuck my mit in the drawbag. First peg just past Bathampton bend on the George section was not good, but I was encouraged by a number of people who reckoned I'd catch a few.

It was going to be difficult to win any coin as in my 10 peg section there were 3 end pegs, with team mate Nicky Ewers (oh look I've drawn another canal flier) on end peg 1 I knew I would need some luck.

For once I was ready to start on time and was keeping everything crossed when I lowered my bread punch in., but after a couple of minutes down went the float. I was getting a bite every cast from roach but they were half ounce at best with only the very odd ouncer. I was missing a few bites on the large punch (trying for a bonus) so I had to reduce the size of punch and get my head down. I caught for about 2 hours on the punch before it completely died and a look on the chopped worm rig brought 1 tiny perch. So I picked up the bloodworm rig and fishing at the bottom of the shelf I was into the same size roach as on the punch! I tried a couple of times for a big perch but it didn't happen. I ended with around 130 fish for 4lb 1oz, that was only good enough for 5th in the section. I probably had as many fish as anyone else but just not enough quality. I used 0.6gm Sensas Auchy for the punch, with a 20B511 to 0.06. On the bloodworm 0.4gm wire bristle / wire stem was best.

Nicky won the section and was 3rd in the match with 8lb+ of bread fish, whilst another team mate Gary O'Shea won it with 13lb. Gary had about 5lb of roach, but 8lb of big perch. There were some very poor sections on the day and so I felt fortunate to have had bites all day which kept me busy and feeling warm!

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