Wednesday 19 August 2015

Bit bashing

Another fishing trip for my nephew Oliver was well overdue and too help out in the summer holidays i thought we could have a bit of "man time" Heyford fisheries in Nether Heyford is a simulated canal where you can practice pole fishing the far bank but rather than for tiddlers they put some decent fish in. In addition to this they have what the call Acorn lake to keep the kids or "those not catching" enternained and i thought we could fish this and be guaranteed a bit. Well i wasn't quite prepared how may bites as they kept coming one after another all day. My arm was aching like mad as i did all the baiting up and with 4/5 maggots at 30 second intervals it was definitely a Repetitive Strain Injury. It was interspersed though with me also doing the un-hooking which as we counted i must have done 67 times! Using a whip and then a few sections of the pole it was great sport and ended with a brilliant net full at the end of the day. Great Angling!!

Barclays National 2015

This years National was again at Pitsford over two days and was set to be quite difficult. On practice day Mike and I struggled to find many fish apart from a few browns wich would need to be put back after you kept one. However we had noticed that they had tipped a stocking in over the causeway and for the last two hours decided to see if we could catch a few - especially since I hadn't done much for a while. I was amazed that after a short while of getting the position right and reducing the size of the Orange blobs to 12's and 14's we got into a rythem and we must have had 30 fish returned by the two of us. I had not done this for a long time and gave us both a boost of confidence. However as always competition day was different and was absolutely chucking it down and the fish had moved to into the corner. Mike and Ash were on them first and all but bagged up. We then jumped in their spot and started catching but by then they had thinned a little and were moving around more. However I had 4 for 8-4 which was not bad on the day. On top of that I can't remember having fished with John Clarke before and it was a shame because he was brilliant company and made it a really enjoyable day.
Overall the most successful team were Thames and Solent with 16 fish for 40lbs 8ozs who managed to find the better quality fish in Sailing Club Bay including Shane Tibbetts with a 3-8 and Ross Jordan taking the best fish Trophy with a rainbow of 4lbs 3oz. Oscar Boatfield 3rd individual with 6 fish for 13lbs 4ozs.
Second place went to Barclaycard helped by Ash Cooper leading the way to finding the early fish and Mike Philpott taking the best bag of the day with 6 fish for 14lbs 8ozs. These stockies were a little fresher and liked the orange blob too much before they had a chance to feed up! Third place went to Clearing Services and Vernon Beak took 2nd place and the most fish trophy with 6 fish for 13lbs 13oz