River Parrett – Mrs Williams Cup – 14th July 2024

After a lovely evening at The Ranch for Ruthie’s Cup Presentation Night we were back bright and early for breakfast before the next match on the Parrett. After we’d eaten, we headed to Kingsbury where Bob and Dave P would meet us at the bridge for a rolling draw. Everybody was hoping for an end peg as typically for a small river they tend to dominate. Nick P was a few vehicles ahead of me and pulled out peg 1 above the bridge which has won the last two Kingsbury matches. When it was my turn, there were only four pegs left and Bob said peg 8 below the bridge was still in the bucket.

It’s a brilliant swim and I managed a win from there the first time I ever fished this stretch, this felt like destiny, fate had my name written all over it, I delved in and pulled out……… number 13, bugger! Bob said I was on ‘The Wall’, I don’t recall it ever doing much in the matches but I know Russ has bagged up there in the evenings so hopefully I should get a few fish. Bagger Burton was behind me and got the peg I was hoping to be on.

After a short drive I was able to park close to my swim and I have to say it looked lovely, overhanging trees and a decent amount of flow. I set up a 1 gram bodied float to fish down the middle and a 0.5 gram DH16 for fishing across to the far bank cover. Today’s side tray contained maggots, casters, worms and Bait-Tech Super Seed hemp.

Plumbing up, there was a nice depth and in the deepest part of the peg, it seemed to be fairly weed free and I was really looking forward to this. With loads of time to spare, I went down to see Rob Cox on 14, his peg looked lovely as well although both of us said we hadn’t seen a fish top which was slightly disconcerting. We walked down to the pegs near the bottom of the stretch which weren’t in as the fields hadn’t been mown yet, they looked lush and you could see roach and chublets near the surface in several of the swims.

I headed back to my peg and on the whistle I cupped in a modest amount of hemp and caster down the middle before starting with single maggot on the hook. After a couple of runs through I hadn’t had an indication, even from a minnow which was a bit worrying but then a really positive bite saw some elastic come out and I netted a chunky 3oz roach to open the scoring. A slightly smaller one followed not long after and I thought I’d be in for a nice little run of fish but then I couldn’t get a bite!!!

Normally the first couple of hours are when you can get a few bites here so as the first sixty minutes ticked by and I still only had the two fish, alarm bells were beginning to ring. I tried going further across, down the peg, holding back and running through but I wasn’t even getting minnow problems. Over the next hour or so I had visits from Bob and Rob who both said they were also struggling but they had caught a few small fish.

I was at a total loss at what to do, as I said previously, if you don’t catch early, you’re in trouble, it’s not like Parrett Works where you can have a go for eels or hope for a big chub to get out of jail (although there are some good fish throughout the stretch as pleasure anglers catch plenty of them, but they just don’t seem to show in matches).

To be honest after such a poor start, I knew it wasn’t going to get any better and I was going through the motions a bit, I tried scaling down from 0.10 to 0.08mm hooklengths but that didn’t invoke a response, I even fished a top kit in close for minnows and managed the grand total of one! The lighter rig across resulted in a ruffe and during the remainder of the match (which felt like days) I only added two more minnows to my bulging keepnet!

I was glad to hear the whistle and after packing up, I walked down with Wayne C to watch the weigh in and get some photos, Rob had found a few more small fish to weigh 7oz, my haul of two roach, three minnows and a ruffe registered 5oz and then Bob had done well with lots of tiny fish for 13oz. Dave P stormed into the lead with some small fish and a decent chublet for 1lb 13oz, Wayne had 3oz, Dave H on peg 9 didn’t weigh and then Bagger Burton comfortably won the section with 2lb 13oz of roach, dace and chublets.

Back at the results and the other section had fished slightly better, Nick paralyzed the match with a lovely net of chub and roach for 6lb 13oz, he’d lost a few as well, Danny Blunn was second in the section with 2lb 6oz from the first peg above the bridge, Cliffy weighed 1lb 15oz, Derek had 1lb 2oz and then Hainsey and Fieldy both weighed 11oz. The Grand Wiz experienced the other end of the spectrum after winning last Sunday when he weighed 4oz this week (I know how you feel mate!). Thanks to Nick Payne for the photos*

1 – Nick Payne (Ilminster) – 6lb 13oz
2 – Danny Blunn (Stoke) – 2lb 6oz
3 – Cliff Gaylard (Stoke) – 1lb 15oz
4 – Derek Goad (Stoke) – 1lb 2oz

Section B
1 – Ian Burton (Taunton) – 2lb 13oz
2 – Dave Pope (Stoke) – 1lb 13oz
3 – Bob Newbury (Stoke) – 13oz
4 – Rob Cox (Ilminster) – 7oz

A really, really disappointing day but that can be natural venues for you, despite not catching much, I’m still sure there were fish in my peg, roach don’t travel round in twos! There used to be loads of gudgeon at Kingsbury but they were very conspicuous by their absence and I think very often these things go in cycles, it happens with roach as well on certain venues. It was very noticeable how the top three weights all came from end pegs which doesn’t seem to be the case as much at Parrett Works, they’re obviously still an advantage but plenty of other pegs can compete there.

So not a lot to write about from my point of view but I always post my reports, good, bad or indifferent. There’s nowhere to hide with a blog, unlike Facebook or Youtube where people can be quite selective with what they publish, I totally understand it but it can give a skewed perspective and personally I think it’s good to watch or read about when things don’t go to plan.

Thanks to very generous £5 donations from The Grand Wiz, Chris Haines and Rob Cox, the Nugget-O-Meter jumped up to £299. 

There’s still a great offer running if you fancy treating yourself to some new fishing gear, use the exclusive discount code AgainstMenandFish10 to get 10% off when you shop online at Somerset Angling

Also I still have copies of my book available from eBay here or Amazon here

And if you could spare five minutes to leave a nice review on Amazon, it would be very much appreciated.

Next up – Todber Manor

Coming soon – Lots more match reports

#sponsoredpost #affiliatelinks