No further visits until the Sunday when it was the third round of the North Wessex Winter League at Lechlade. The draw was in a field next to the official expensive car park, parking at the edge of the field there were 4 sections at Lechlade itself and 2 at “Bloomers field. I managed to get drawn C1, scales again!, and faced an extra long walk just to reach the river. Finally reaching my peg I find it would have been easier to walk along the main road and through the car park to access the river!

I set up a waggler, a feeder, a 3g flat float, a worm rig and a 2.5g roach rig. On the whistle I cupped in 3 balls of groundbait (Roach Noire and River) laced with just a pinch of casters and hemp. I was soon getting bites and after 90 minutes I had about 3lb of roach in the net when calamity struck – a large barge decided to turn between myself and the down stream peg, to be fair the guy knew what he was doing and did not make the usual pigs ear of it, BUT he managed to end up getting the propeller and seriously gunning the engine directly over where I had been fishing, resulting in a washing machine full of dirty water in front of me. I hoped the 7 feet of water and time for it to settle would allow me to continue catching but fat chance of that! My once lovely snag free peg was now festooned with major snags that were unmovable! Despite my best efforts and trying waggler, feeder and all areas of the swim the last 3.5 hours produced 6 fish for me to weigh in 3-9 and last in section. Fortunately other team members did better and we ended up still at the top but our lead cut to one point!

The weather Gods then took hold and it wasn’t until the following Friday that I was able to get out again, returning to peg 10 at Bowood for a short session. Setting up the usual way it was a case of picking out a couple of fish at a time from the coloured water (not as coloured as I expected though!). I ended up with 22 roach, 4 skimmers,18 rudd and a hybrid for 4-02, no runs on the pike rod at all.

Tuesday sees me up at Partridge Fishery for a coaching session with Andy May arranged via Herbie at MFS.

I was joined by 2 others, Ken and Ian with another having to drop out. Andy explained the fishery had been fishing hard and with the wet weather it may be a couple of hours before we started to get bites! I ended up on peg 59 on Covey 3, with ken on 60 and Ian on 62 (Andy left out 61 deliberately). Andy set his tackle up on 63 and went through his rigs, the feeding process and various other things that I won’t divulge here! He showed us how he would fish , the areas to start with and laying in rigs and the reasons behind his approach, then we went off to our pegs to have a go with Andy’s words ringing in our ears, Andy then rotated between us for the rest of the day, watching our efforts and making suggestions of how we could make subtle changes to what we were doing. The fishing was hard and was not a form I would normally do (F1s and ide) but managed to get 6 ide, 6 F1s, 2 carp 4 gudgeon, 2 rudd and a roach for about 16lb. Not a spectacular return but given the driving rain for most of the day and way the fishery was at the time it managed to suffice as the whole point of the day was to learn something and I certainly did that! Andy was a very welcoming and knowledgeable host and well worth having a session with if you get the chance.

Friday sees me off again, not to Bowood but this time to Larford to practice with Darren for our upcoming silver fish match in November. It was Darren’s first visit and he was, in his own words, “in awe” of the place! WE wanted to ignore the carp and settled on pegs 6 (Darren) and 7(me). Darren was going to ignore the feeder and just concentrate on the pole with a “ball it” line and a “toss-pot” line, I planned to have an hour on the feeder while my 4 balls of groundbait settled on 10m and loose fed with micros plus the 2+2 line with 4mm meat and 4mm pellet. I was thankful for using a braid reel line as the bites on both worm and caster and maggot were very slight and I doubt whether I would have seen them on mono. After an hour I had 4 skimmers and missed a few bites, switching to the 10m line I could not get a bite on pellet while Darren was getting plenty of action on single maggot, I swapped to double maggot and began to catch for the remainder of the day, discovering that the fish were definitely coming to the groundbait. I ended up with 17 skimmers, 4 proper bream of 3lb+, 6 perch with one being over the pound and another between 12oz and a pound, 6 roach and a hybrid for about 25lb+. Steady fishing with us trying out various things during the day ready for the match (if we are not in lockdown by then!).

November starts with Round 4 at Radcot – my least favourite venue on the Thames.