River Nene Wansford - Mon 14th Nov

After reading a couple of match reports from Deeping St James AC club matches on their water at Wansford and another really tuff session on the Grand Union Canal I decided that it was time to venture onto my local river Nene. I had taken the day off work at short notice and was really excited at the prospect of fishing some running water but must admit to being a little concerned when I saw the river as it was quite clear and was flowing slowly and only averaging 7ft or 8ft things looked dodgy.
I was aware that both of the club matches had been won from peg 4 and so decided to fish at the other end of the stretch on peg 21. I had a narrow boat moored across for me and the shadow it cast on the water was great to see your float against, I decided that I would fish the pole and after plumbing settled on 11.5 metres which was just past the middle.



The view from peg 21

I introduced 4 balls of groundbait squeezed quite hard and containing a few Pinkies and some hemp and then left it for a few minutes while I arranged the rest of my gear and had a quick cuppa before I started. I dropped the 1.5gm rig in upstream so that it was fishing at full depth by the time it reached the baited area and wallop the float disappeared without a trace and I lifted into my first fish of the session which turned out to be a nice Dace of about 4oz.



Dace like this made up the bulk of my catch

It was all going too well with another 6 Dace a Roach and a couple of Gudgeon in the net in the first 20 minutes when I got snaffled by a Pike while shipping back a small Roach, it was around 5lb and I had it to the net in no time and just as I was about to drag it over the net it rolled over and my hook length snapped. This slowed things down a bit and I was only getting an odd bite, most of which I missed but after catching a couple more fish the bloody Pike came back and had another go but this time let go of the fish earlier and I retrieve both my hook and a Gudgeon. Anyway this was the pattern for the next 1 1/2 hours with a couple of fish and then wham another hit from the Pike, after the 6th time things seemed to settle down with the pike probably moving out of my swim. I slowly got the swim back with regular loose feeding of maggot and Hemp until I was getting bites most runs through for the rest of the 5 hour session.
I wasn't really sure what I had in the net but thought that it must be about 7lb, so it came as a nice surprise when I pulled the net out and decided to have a weigh of my catch to find I had managed 9lb 4oz.

My Catch

The catch consisted mainly of dace between 1 and 6oz with a few small Roach and a handful of chunky Gudgeon, so all in all not a bad return considering the Pike trouble I had early in the session. I am so keen to get back on there I have entered the match there on Sunday which should prove interesting as I have not fished competitively for over 10 years.