Sunday myself and Danny decided to meet up at Snitterfield Ressie and target the roach that have in previous seasons fed well in Feb/March, with the average stamp being around 8 oz it makes for some pleasant fishing. We had also heard of some slightly larger fish coming out so might be interesting...
I got there before Danny and started to set up at on e of my favourite pegs, I say set up it was more like a full on fight with my on box which was being decidedly awkward, as the footplate had dropped out and for the life of me I could not get it to set level...sometimes more tackle and kit is more of a pain in the arse, than just a chair and rod! Just as I finished the duel, Danny arrived and set on the peg next to me.
On arrival he said that he had something for me....I thought this was going to be another sample of the cookies that his girlfriend makes for us on a regular basis..but no! He reminded me that on a recent visit to the Windrush when we met up with David to target Grayling, we had agreed on the "pound for the biggest challenge"! On this occasion I won, with what has to be said was a very small specimen but on a hard day was the only one caught..David prior to departing walked over to me and paid he way....but Danny I thought was trying to relent on his bet! This was until he produced "the pound for the biggest award". After receiving this illustrious award from Mr D Everitt from The Lure of Angling, we got down to fishing...for which we agreed the award would be straight back up for grabs with roach being the target!
I had set up my pole with two swims, one at 10 meters with a deep pellet rig consisting of a Drannan 1.0g Lake float, olivette and size 16 G point pellet hook, my tactic on this swim was going to be to cup some 2mm expanders in then fish a 4mm over the top. The second was a top three kit for the inside line, with a Drennan 0.5g pinkie float with number 10 shot shirt button style for on-the-drop fishing to a size 22 team England hook. On this line my tactic was going to be to start with liquidised bread with punch, then introduce pinkies at a later stage.
The other rod I set up was a light feeder with 5lb line onto which I put a Preston Pellet feeder with a long link to a size 16 pellet hook, on which I would use the 2mm in the feeder on the 4mm on the hook as the bream in the ressie love those pellets!
I was struggling to settle on the inside line as it did not quite feel right and though I did snag a few roach after an hour or so, it did not really kick on and bites were extremely quick and finicky.
So, I tried the feeder and had an instant response by bagging a few nice bream which averaged out at about 1lb 8oz and some very hard fighting roach/bream hybrids. But, with roach as the target I knew I would have to do something different to catch them.
Hard fighting hybrid
I changed my light inside line rig for a blob float with only one number 10 shot on, focusing my efforts on bringing the fish up in the water at 10 metres by spraying 5-10 pinkies over the top every 20 seconds. Again this was met with some interesting results as it became evident that the fast bites were Rudd, doing a hit and run on the bait. After a while I had bagged some very pretty fish that were fin perfect. Including a nice Rudd of about 8oz and a roach of 120z, which ended up being this fish that retained, "the pound for the biggest" award!!!!
The major award
At dinner time we called it time and though the conditions had been great for roach and silvers we were a little disappointed with our haul, I ended up with just over 10lb of silvers...not bad for march but should have been more! Did not take a bloody picture though!
As a result I had to let the line go very slack and hope for the very best....which was the fish swimming into mid river all of its own accord! result...
