My Return To Match Fishing

Sunday saw my return to match fishing with this to be my first match in 10 years and I must admit that I had mixed feelings about the whole thing. I had been contemplating taking in a few matches for some time now and had been looking at the local clubs and their match fixtures trying to find one that I thought might suite me. After a lot of thought I decided that the Deeping St James Angling Club would probably be the one for me as they have what is probably one of my favourite stretches of the Nene along with some other sections of river that they hold club regular matches on throughout the winter months. I made the phone call to the match secretary and after a brief chat I was booked into the match which was also to be round 1 of their Individual league, so my timing was spot on and I entered myself for that as well.
I had looked at the reports from the previous 2 matches to get an idea of how the venue was fishing and who the form anglers were and I even had a few hours fishing it in the week prior to the match.



I must admit to not really fancying the draw



Match day arrived and I got to the draw nice and early so I could get to meet a few of the regulars and perhaps glean any information that might help although I already had a plan of sorts that I could adapt  depending on which peg I drew. There was a good turnout of 20 anglers and they seemed a good bunch and most of them looked like they could fish a bit too. I had been told by someone in the week that I would really be up against it with the top anglers in the club which was funny as the person didn't even know me but hey I wanted some competition and that was the point of fishing the match. I was about 5th into the draw bag and pulled out peg 18 which wasn't what the regulars thought of as being a good peg as the last 2 matches had seen the better weight come from the low numbers with peg 4 winning both previous matches.

When I arrived at my peg I must admit that I was a little disappointed as it was a little wider with the flow none existent on the inside so with this in mind I would look to fish the pole at 11.5 - 13m into the flow and I would also set up a Waggler to fish further across.
I set up the pole and had a plumb around the peg and found that the water was the same depth from 5 - 11.5m at about 8ft but at 13m it was starting to shallow up and was about a foot shallower. The run through at 11.5m was reasonably even but did shallow up a few inches toward the end of the run but the bottom was clear and there were no real snags to worry about.
Well that was the pole line sorted out and so I set up a 3AAA insert waggler to fish 3/4 across in about 6 1/2 ft of water, it was just a few minutes before the all in that  I also decided to set up a rig to fish at 5m just in case I was struggling.


Most fish came to Red Maggot on the day


The whistle sounded and I started with 3 hard balls of dark groundbait cupped in on the pole line and a couple of pouches of maggots on the far line and nothing on the inside until I got a feel for what was going on. I shipped out the 1.5g rig and layed it in upstream so that it was fishing at depth as it passed over the groundbaited area and first pass the float sailed away and I was into my first fish which turned out to be a 3oz Dace. I re-baited and layed the rig in and as if by magic the float just disappeared again when it got over the baited area, this was a great start to the match and it carried on for the first hour before the bites tailed off a little. At this point I introduced another couple of small balls of groundbait via the cup and set off into a reasonable rhythm again but this time I started loose feeding a little Hemp and Maggot over the top but by the end of the second hour bites had slowed right up. The good news was that it slowed for the others around me as well so it probably wasn't anything I had done wrong and at about this time one of the fancied anglers from the favoured pegs came walking down and said that they were struggling at the other end and that he had only had 1 Gudgeon. I had however been loose feeding a few maggots by hand on the inside line for about 20 minutes and thought that I would just have a look and see if there was anything about. I dropped the rig in and it went straight under to my surprise and I hooked into a Perch of about 8oz and this was followed by a few small Roach, dace and Gudgeon and over the next 40 minutes  I added another pound or so while others around me couldn't get a bite. I was aware that a couple of anglers downstream of me had also been catching quite well but I had no real idea of how that compared to me.
Anyway the last hour and 20 minutes was a bit of a scratch around and I switched between all 3 lines to take what I could which included a number of small Bleak and even 4 Minnows along with a couple of 6oz Roach. At the whistle I was happy that I had done reasonably well for my first match in a very long time and thought I had about 6lb or so in the net. I watched the weigh in and when I weighed in was pleased that I had under estimated things a little and had in fact got 7lb 6oz which put me in 3rd place. As the weigh in continued the weights were considerably lower and I was safe in 3rd place which I was more than happy with as I really didn't expect to frame first time out. This result also gets me off to a great start in the individual league and sees me start the series in second place although I am sure I wont stay there for long but then again with a few good draws who knows?


I even had 4 Minnows