River Beult – Evening match
A warm, muggy evening, and we headed down for our first visit to the Beult in Cross at Hand. We arrived at 5:20 to have a nose around before the draw at 6pm, and found most people were already there, keen for the off. Ryan drew peg 9, seems to be his favourite number to draw at the moment. As we head off through the long grass, trying to avoid all the hidden rabbit holes, we get our first view of the river. A beautiful slightly snaking river, with reeds and lily pads along the edges.
The Set-up
Very simple tonight, a 4x12g KC Chimp on a shallow 2ft rig to a size 18 red maggot hook, and a 4x12g KC Chimp on 6ft rig to a size 14 silverfish hook for fishing the bottom. One 2 + 3 pole line which can drift the shallow rig down in the small amount of flow.
The All-In
As the whistle goes for the start at 6:30, Ryan puts in 2 cups of Sensas 3000 groundbait, and 2 cups of our liquidised sweetcorn to give a bit of cloud to the area. He ships out the pole with the shallow rig, and 2 red maggots on the hook. 5 mins gone, and after a few very small bites, he hooks his first fish, a small dace.
The bites keep coming, but they are very quick, which seem to indicate small fish just sucking at the maggot. He does start to catch the odd fish, a mixture of rudd, roach, dace and bleak. Unfortunately due to the steep bank, it is very difficult for him to get the top section back cleanly to unhook the fish, which results in the odd one falling off before they are in his hand. This goes on until about 8pm, when he decides to try fishing on the bottom for hopefully a tench, and changes to the longer rig with half a worm, held on by a single white maggot.
After 20 mins without a sign of anything, he changes back to the shallow rig, and continues to catch a few small silvers before the whistle sounds for the end of the match at 9:15.
Result
For his first time on the beautiful, relaxing Beult, it had not been a bad evening for Ryan, even though he was not able to catch any of the tench. Although he ended up with 22 fish, he was going to be lucky to make 1 pound, but there again, he has at least caught better that Jim & Tom who were either side of him. Apparently there had been 2 caught from pegs 1 & 2, which are down at the other end towards the bridge. We will hopefully see some tench when we are back on Saturday for Fred’s tench teaching day.
Report by Mick:
A couple of Tench made an appearance from the two pegs nearest the bridge (and well away from Jim Randell). Dave Bertram landing a splendid specimen of 5lb 4.5oz plus a few bits to win the match with 5lb 15oz 8drm. John Overton had a Tench an eel and some Perch from the peg nearest the bridge to finish a close 2nd with 5lb 12oz. Guy Usmar led the Tenchless trailing field with just under 2lb of Roach and Rudd.
Full Result:
Dave Bertram 5lb 15oz 8drm (12 points) £20
John Overton 5lb 12oz (11) £15
Guy Usmar 1lb 15oz (10) £10
Mick Roberts 1lb 11oz (9) £5)
Steve Giles 1lb 1oz 8drm (8)
Lou Buells 1lb 0oz (7)
Ryan Kennison 10oz (Junior) (12 points)
Jim Randell 9oz (6)
Mick Wright 4oz (5)
Terry Jarvis 3oz 12drm (4)
Tom Holloway 1oz (3)
Evening Shield placings after 4/6 matches (best 5 count).
Mick Roberts 11,10,9,9 = 39
John Overton 12,11,5,11 = 39
Terry Jarvis 0,12,12,4 = 28
Lou Buells 0,9,10,7 = 26
Tom Holloway 10,7,0,3 = 20
Mick Wright 0,8,6,5 = 19
Steve Giles 0,0,11,8 = 19
Dave Bertram 0,0,7,12 = 19
Guy Usmar 0,0,8,10 = 18
Jim Randell 9,0,0,6 = 15
Melvyn Pankhurst 0,0,0 = 0
Juniors
Ryan Kennison 12,12,12,12 = 48
Max Goodwin 11,0,0,0 =11