10oz Away From A Golden Ticket
Just fished a couple of contrasting Riverfest qualifiers. First up was the long drive south to the Dorset Stour for my first ever visit. A stunning looking venue, lots of helpful people, especially organiser Ian Paulley, and no need for a trolley or platform was a bonus.
Sadly I drew a peg that no one sounded too optimistic about and plumbed up terrible, which I assume was because it was so close to a derelict railway bridge downstream. I say ‘downstream’ but it took two hours to work out what way the river actually flowed! The wind was horrific, so the inside was towing hard upstream while my 13m swim was barely moving the correct way to the right!
After two hours I had to get off my box and set a feeder rod up as it was nigh-on impossible to hold a pole in the fierce wind that had whipped up. Apparently elsewhere people were fishing long poles with ease!? Only managed four perch and a crayfish on the tip and the rest of my 4lb was mostly more perch and just a few little roach and rudd. That was still enough for a section envelope, which was some consolation after a tough day battling the elements. Not the best of pegs or conditions for a first visit, but will definitely be back as it’s such a nice looking venue. Well done Andrew Cranston and Steve Kedge on qualifying.
Yesterday I was back on the Trent at Newark, with four 20-peg qualifying zones at Rolleston, Newark Dyke, East Stoke and Crankley. Talk at the draw was to avoid Crankley, so that’s where I typically drew! I was on peg 39 and organiser John Urruty kindly gave me some good advice and said I had half a chance, although the fancied area was the lower numbers off the main river. My peg had a ‘chub bush’ downstream, but a chat with Matt Hall suggested I’d be very lucky to see one.
With no depth across and all the pace on the inside I’ve just set up a short feeder, a bolo rig and a heavily overshotted flat float as it was tanking through all day. I’ve had an interesting match, catching two big perch and an eel, plus some smaller perch on the flattie. I’ve then had some tiny roach and an odd better one on the bolo running down to the bush.
My 7lb 15oz was enough for another section prize and agonisingly just 10oz short of qualifying! Double Riverfest Champ Mike Bedding was up the arm and had 8lb 9oz of chunky roach on hemp to get that golden ticket. Great to see Mike back in the Final as he’s a cracking angler. Definitely a missed chance, though, as I’ve spent too long trying the feeder when I should’ve just kept putting something in the net on the float. That’s the beauty of hindsight. With such a big zone you always assume someone has caught double figures elsewhere…
The match was won by Andy Starkey with three barbel for 19lb from East Stoke and Dave Clayton, Mike and Steve Umney all qualified. On to the next one…
