Club fixture today, you'd be forgiven for thinking this was the GUC and it was very similar TBH.
But no, it was the river Thames west of Oxford. Barely a trickle of flow accompanied by floating leaves which I could reach on the pole. Set up a tip rod with maggot feeder for the far bank features. To cut a long 6 hour grueller short it was dire. Bits on the pole and bits on the feeder for the first two hours then someone flicked the switch to off.
Pitiful weights compared to the recent matches on the lower Thames.
Results...
mg:
Don't ask......
Is that Godstow, Simon ? Ten years since I fished above Oxford so my memory isn't so good. Looks a bit half a lobbie and hope to me in those conditions .
Anyway, had a bit of a grueller myself at Royal Berkshire. Drew the widest swim on the far end bank. no inside features other than a few stickups to my left. Set up smallest method feeder and straight bomb/ mini cage feeder rods, two light pole rigs of 0.2 gm with 0.13 hooklength for out and 0.17 for in the stickups on black hydro and 14 solid respectively, and a light caster rig with 0.10 for the roach if needed but fully expected to spend most of the day tight over on the tip. Started on small method feeder without a sniff, kept firing one or two pellets across and switched to straight bomb, same non-result. None of the other five anglers I could see had caught either so time to have a look on the caster. Twenty minutes, two non caster sized roach, went out another 2m and one better one about 4oz and a few bits but they wouldn't settle and didn't think I'd get anywhere by chasing them. So, back on the bomb, and then out of the blue Bob on my left had a carp, first one of the match after nearly two hours, as did two anglers who I couldn't see round the corner to my right. Were things looking up ? In short, no. Gone half time and only Richard had more than one carp, three people with one, so decided to have a look on chopped worm, nice wide swim so likely to be a few skimmers in the area and might only need a few. Set up half gram rig as wind had got up and water beginning to tow, put in a decent pot of chop at 12m and went straight over it in case. Straight down a hole , 6oz roach, out again, straight under again and this time a lot of no6 elastic came out. Took my time and eventually netted the carp, about 7lb. Switched the half gram rig to the black hydro topkit and upped the hooklength to 0.13. Last two hours were a bit odd, the roach obviously wanted the worm more than they did the caster as they were straight over it every time I fed but they were cleaning it up quickly and then disappearing rather than sitting over it so it was only a couple of fish( if that) for every feed and didn't have enough worm with me to keep it going in all the time (less than a quarter kilo left over from last week. don't usually need it at RBF) Anyway, was just thinking of going back on the tip for the last half hour as by now there were three with two carp (and Richard with six), when there was no immediate response to the latest top up and thought another carp had turned up and pushed the roach away. Sure enough, five minutes later and about 6lb this time.
Added a couple more roach and thought that might just have done enough for second, but a couple of others had last minute carp and my 17-1 ended up 4th. 32-9 won it, then a 23 and a 22
Easily the hardest day we've ever had at RBF, a week of E and NE winds definitely not helping.
