In my match fishing days I preferred river matches,these days it seems anglers don't so much,but when you look at the amount of people trying to get riverfest tickets it still seems popular,or is it another way to get a crack at big prize money???
Here were a couple of decent matches at Sandford, and Donnington stretches , some top names in them.What makes you say there’s fewer river matches these days, Alan? If anything I’d say there’s more today than before. Many match anglers have grown tired of boring carp matches on commercials. The Thames is still a very popular match river as is the Yare for instance.
I've fished the Clive Smith memorial on the Wark Avon,i'm sure there were more than three hundred pegs,I won my section and came tenth overall,many opens I fished were over 100 peggers,Vauxhall opens have had 160 pegs,mini opens at Newport Pagnell were 40 peggers,matches at Tadpole were at least 80 peggers,sometimes 120 if I remember correctly,Vauxhall club matches were nearly always 30 peggers at least,that said Luton AC used to run opens on the canal around Leighton Buzzard,they were at least 100 pegs,with the likes of Billy Makin and Micky Hyatt always there,a sad thing really,because although there were lots of rubbish pegs,people still came from far and wide,matches on the Trent were often mega...
Had a walk along the Tadpole Bridge stretch last week, Walked down river from opposite the Trout Inn.Fished many matches on the Thames over the years, any where from Tadpole Bridge to Walton. Mainly small 60 pegs but also the LAA championships in the end most anglers drifted away to commercials carp water matches. I think the main reasons were parking and the walks on rivers sections.
It's the water clarity that has done for the volume of Trent matches. When the water was cloudy there were roach and gudgeon on virtually every peg and you could put a weight together of them for a chance of a section pick-up, or even framing, depending on how things went on the day. These fish could be caught running a stick float through off the rod end, or a couple of rod lengths out, or on a 3 or 4 m whip.I agree with your overall sentiment Alan, two things sprang to mind from your latest post.
Firstly Clive Smith, a great angler and a Shakespeare man iirc who's death from bladder cancer prompted the link between Chrysoidine dye used on bronze maggots that were all the rage during the match fishing/river heydays and big weekly opens of the 80's.
Wasn't his home practice water Edgbaston Reservoir in Brum?
The second was the mention of the Trent...
Midweek and weekends would be booked solid around here with opens and now you're lucky (or unlucky, depending on your view) if you stumble upon a club match.
Blots on the landscape such as Burton Joyce and Hoveringham were almost household phrases and I'm not sure where the chain was broken because it's such a fantastic river these days albeit in a much different respect, the evenly spread shoals of Roach and Chub may not be the case anymore but anyone could win with a few decent Barbel which are widely spread, not to mention the big Bream shoals that thrive and get someone with the match fishing mind set of the likes of Ashurst or Marks on the river and they'd soon sort out a way to win off of most pegs.
I think the demise around here came in the mid to late 90's when the river was pronounced all but dead but the reality was it was simply going through a change, much like the water quality or should I say clarity, which is no coincidence.
Many have of course adapted to the change but once you break that momentum it's hard to get it back, especially these days when take up in angling is probably so much less and even less in the niche of match fishing > river match fishing.
I'd love to see it come back to it's former heydays in terms of matches and regularity but I doubt I ever will, the consolation there is that one's loss is another's gain...
For me at least
As much as I aspired to the match fishing heroes of my youth and tried to emulate them the fact of the matter is that I was all but, in that particular discipline...
Rubbish!
6. expectations ... in 40 years of match fishing I’ve had more than 50 pounds weight twice ... my average target is 12-14 pounds ... not sure that’s really attractive these days but I like It!
i tend to pick some pretty good venues now ... where a lot of pegs are capable of a stone on a decent day .... especially in summer and autumn.Alex,my big weights were similar in number to you(though not the maximum),I always enjoyed the challenge of maximising weights from my draw,even if that was only a few pounds,almost certain of what was going to be needed to win the section,or frame in the match,I always thought that on a river 5/6lbs was a good days fishing,regardless of success in the match itself,I think greed in match fishing forced the pools fodder(horrible term)out,paying 20/25 quid pools,plus cost of bait and fuel was pure greed by the top anglers,you reap what you sow however,because now there are a lot more possible winners in the draw,all top guys....