River Huntspill Open Match (Sunday).

With a practice match scheduled before the next round of the Somerset Super League next weekend traveling Partner Don Sutherland and myself decided to give it another go, Arriving at the draw we found out their were 20 booked-in to fish and the match it was going to be spread in two sections below woolavington were I drew last week, or so we thought, but for some reason they had chosen to leave out the section I drew last week starting further down the river which not only means a hellish walk over uneven ground it now meant we would be fishing a section which wouldn't even be pegged in the league next week" Knowing this I probably wouldn't of even bothered to fish as it just seems pointless to me, Teams wonder why they struggle to get anglers to fish these team events and in my eyes this match had been set out for thier own benefit to go bream chasing further down the river but who knows? One things for sure, I'm Seriously considering the future of team fishing as the effort you need to put in just doesn't seem worth it or cost for that matter..

I fully expected with the way it was pegged end pegs would dominate or the swims further down towards the noted clapper' would produce, Into the draw and I Don & Myself were nowhere near them being on pegs 100 and me on 102. arriving at my swim my first job was to dig out a section of the bank in order to get my box anywhere close to the waters edge which had me sweating like a pig for starters" It seemed most were prepared just to spend the match fishing the feeder for bream and although I planned to do the same I wanted the back up line of a pole swim at 13mts which hopefully would produce some eels or silver fish should the tip not produce. I assembled two pole rigs 0.3g and 0.5g both on 0.11-0.10 and with size 20 B520 hooks ( A bit smaller than the norm then) to fish between 12 & 13mts as I was set back in a bit of a bay.

I started the match by feeding 15 feeder full's of ground-bait, chopped worm & Squatts over towards the far bank and cupped in some casters & maggots onto the pole line. this week I started on two dead red maggots and missed two bites in the first two casts' but then had a small roach, over the next 50mins I switched between various baits but all I added was an 6oz eel and was already getting board' I decided to give the swim another 6 feeder-full's of bait and try the pole line.

Starting on the lighter rig with single white maggot on the hook the float hardly had time to settle before I had my first eel again about 6oz. the next 4 put-in's saw me add 4 more eel's to 10oz before things went quite, I cupped in some more feed and had another go on the feeder but it just seemed motionless as I couldn't get a bite on it know matter what baits I tried on the hook. back on the pole and a couple more small eel's but it wasn't quick. by now the sky had blacken and the rumble of thunder was fast approaching' I got up for my bait brolley and asked the guy above me how he was getting on and he only had an 6oz skimmer at this stage. it wasn't long before we had a massive down pore of heavy rain, I tried the tip again and when I wasn't expecting it missed a bite on worm and maggot but that was as far as it went' after the rain had passed I tried the pole again but couldn't get a bite on it so it seemed the heavy rain had put pay to it for some reason as Mark Broomsgrove below me who also set up a pole and had a few early eel's was struggling for bites. the last couple of hours I kept switching between the two lines but only added a small perch on the pole in the last 20mins. I finished the day with around 11 eel's and a few bit's for just under 3kg but as expected the end pegs dominated with Mark Treasurer form Daiwa Gordon league on the first peg of the match length peg 95 taking the spoil's with a 22kg bag of bream and skimmers on the feeder, further down the last two pegs of the match produced second with 18kg odd and 9kg odd so my prediction was right but you still have to catch them. Back next week for the second round of the super league and although it looks like bream will dominate the top catches at least I got a better picture of what to expect on the pole lines should the case arise and I need to catch a few for team points.