After a blistering first half of the year where I won loads of matches and caught new pb’s all over the place, things have slowed up somewhat (well they had to at some point I suppose!). Since my last ‘rambling’ post (which can be found here – The Halfway Point), I’ve only won one more match and although I’m still collecting regular brown envelopes they are for minor frame places and section wins. I seem to have lost my way at Summerhayes a bit and another silvers win eludes me (mainly due to that pesky Glynn Wickham!) and similarly the fishing at Dillington is still fantastic with high double figures required to win every match but the whip boys (Fieldy and Bruce) are taking it in turns to win and in the ten match Summer series they only failed to do so on two occasions. Ash proved you can win with the pole and caster catching quality roach but I’m not getting it right at the moment.
I hadn’t intended this to be a downbeat post but with the Summer coming to an end I didn’t manage any more mullet trips and tench fishing at Cheddar reservoir was also on my radar but never materialised and when I knackered my pole in my last match, the year was definitely taking a turn for the worse! Enough of all this doom and gloom though as the blog reached and stormed past 200,000 hits and as I write this, the total stands at 209,853 which I just find incredible. When I first started writing way back in 2006, I was getting around 1000 hits a month and now I sometimes nearly reach that in a day!
Steve Hurford took me to Throop Fishery on the Dorset Stour a few weekends back and even though neither of us managed a barbel, it was still a really nice day and we saw quite a few good fish roll and missed a few bites. I’m still eager to add new species and pb’s to my list and there might be a beach fishing session on the horizon and Russell Hilton has been catching loads of different species from the coast and I’m trying to get him to take me!
The matches on the river started today although my campaign starts next week and I’m really looking forward to trying to defend my V.E.S. title. The river looks in good nick although we could do with some rain (but not too much!). Rob Cox, Stuart Alford, Steve Parker and Graham Field have worked really hard down at Redbridge and Isle Brewers digging out some existing swims and creating some new ones and they’ve reported lots of fish moving about so hopefully we should see some good catches.
Last year we had torrential rain which meant we were rained off the river and our last match was in December but with the colder weather I enjoyed some fantastic roach sport at Dillington with nets of quality roach to nearly 18lb – great fishing.
So please stay with me as, along with the usual match reports, I’ll be bringing you more interviews with some top anglers, reviews of the latest tackle and I’ll be visiting some new venues and as ever, trying to add new species to my list.
