This will be a very short update on what has turned out to be a bad month with the death of my father-in-law up in Yorkshire on the 15th curtailing any opportunities to get out on the bank.

The month began badly with the penultimate round of the North Wessex Winter League taking place at Radcot on the Thames. Now Radcot is my least favorite venue on the Thames as it is so peggy and affected by the weather. This match was to prove this in abundance. I drew the last downstream section F2 which gave me the board also. I had a straight featureless peg with a depth of about 9-10 feet at 13m with a bitter wind off my left shoulder. I set up a waggler, a feeder and two pole rigs – one with a 5g Blues  float to have some control and a lighter 2g Paster both had a20 to 0.08mm hook-length. I started cautiously and cupped in 3 balls of groundbait with a few casters on 13m and began drip feeding maggot at 5m just over the shelf. 20 minutes later I lifted the float to reset it and found a small dace hanging on – at least I had not blanked I thought! Two hours later and biteless I caught a pair of eyes- so small I was unsure what it was! Then in the last hour and a half I managed to snare 3 small chub. Nothing on feeder, nor waggler. The section went like this F1 6oz, me 1-5, F3 18lb (5 bites on feeder 5 chub from the front of the only large tree in the water in sight), F4 14lb (4 bites from the rear of the same tree 3 chub and a huge perch), F5 end peg in the match 10lb of small fish on waggler. I hate Radcot!

The match turned out better team wise as we finished second on the day and cut Radcot’s lead to 2points with one match to go.

The only other visit I made was on the following Monday whenI managed to talk my friend Pete Sarahs into coming out to Blacklands with me. I put him on the Bench peg and I fished the peg on the right of him, almost in ythe corner. Anyway we had a good day with Pete catching about 15lb and I ended up with 25-14 including a carp of 3-10.

That was it for the month as I had to pull out of the final Winter League match on the canal at Pewsey, which to Radcot’s credit they won with Pewsey finishing second on the day and in the league overall.

Hopefully December will be kinder and I’ll have some photos/videos to include.