I’ve not been angling for a couple of weeks, as a holiday to Cornwall intervened ... so was back for the 2nd round of the Bedford winter league on Sunday.
this round was fished at Ringstead shallows on the Nene, Which isn’t that shallow, last year I had 11ft of depth and this year the deepest part of the peg was nearly 10 feet!!
I was lucky enough to win the corresponding fixture last year, with sixteen and a half pounds of lovely roach ... but was not so fortunate this year. The river was painfully clear still, I could see one misplaced ball of white crumb on the deck in 7ft of water! the days of constant colour in the Nene are now ancient memories.
I set up to fish 3 lines ... bread punch at 4m in the deepest part of the peg.
loose fed hemp & caster at about 7m ... from where the bottom shelved up rapidly to the far bank ... where I was catapulting a few casters regularly for a waggler option.
i managed a few small fish off each line (roach, dace, chublets, bleak and a couple of perch) but it was pretty slow going. I thought that I might have seven pounds ... but only weighed in 5 pounds 9 ounces ... which was good enough for third in section .. but miles off the section (and match) winner who had an ounce shy of 15 pounds of bigger Chublets up to a pound.
Our team, Blunham AC, were equal first on section points with two others ... but lost out for first place on weight.
steve drakulic was our best performer again ... catching 11 pounds of small roach to win the bottom section. with hindsight, he fed 3 pints of pinkies for that ... I rather suspect that I’d have caught a lot more from my peg with a similar approach.