June 16th Tidal Trent Open Match, Laughterton & North Clifton. 53 Fished.
Well… the new season has now started and I for one had mixed feelings about the opening day. After all of the rainfall we have had over the previous month, there were some bad decisions made on the opening day. The venue of choice (I should say, my favourite venue!) was the tidal Trent where I run the majority of matches for my local angling association, Lincoln & District AA. We have the rights to both Laughterton, just downstream of Dunham Bridge and also North Clifton which is the section upstream of Dunham. These two sections couldn’t be anymore different with North Clifton a reasonably narrow section, with widths anywhere from 35 – 60M and Laughterton up to 80 – 90M wide in areas. Also each of these vary from peg to peg with some pegs being 15 feet deep in normal conditions and only a couple of pegs away you may only have 3 feet. There are also some very interesting features on both of these sections with North Clifton having a sunken island running down the middle of the river from approximately peg 1 – 5. On a high river with a big split tide (split tide is when the river rises with the tide during the match) these pegs can hold a lot of big bream and skimmer. Last season the Tidal Trent saw some of the best river fishing in the country with many weights exceeding 70lb and some breaking the 80lb barrier. These weights were made up predominantly of bream and skimmers but many other species also made an appearance, such as perch, roach, Hybrids/silver bream, barbel, eels, chub, ide and even the odd carp. Also, thinking back to the previous seasons when we had some flood water on the river, it seemed to fish in a similar way to when we had a big split tide. With this in mind I was ignoring all the experienced superstars who were trying to tell me that it would be a hard match. I had my plan set for an aggressive feeder attack (let’s be honest for those who know me it was never going to be anything else). My destination was peg 8 at North Clifton. This is an end peg as such as we have a couple of parish pegs that are between 8 and 9 so I was quite happy with the draw. This section would run from peg 2 – 12 and I felt that peg 2 would stand a really good chance of winning the match. However, as sections are won via default there was still a good chance of picking some money up and with a bit of luck a framing place could be on the cards. I set 13’ & 14’ Shimano Catana with a 3oz carbon tip in both. On the 13’ I was using a 5000 front drag stradic with 0.23 sufix elite mainline and a 1oz nisa medium open end feeder with a 3oz “dead cow” attached. On the 14’ I had a 5000 technium reel with 8lb technium mainline with a 1.5oz medium nisa feeder and a 3oz “dead cow”. Both rods were started with a 2½’ 0.17 dia hooklength and a size 10 PR39 hook. My intention was to fish lobby all day for anything large that wanted to consume my hookbait. My groundbait of choice was Silver X Carp Match Green which I have found to be brilliant when targeting Bream and skimmers on the Trent. I chopped up some worms and added the same quantity of casters and red maggot to the chopped worms with a sprinkling of corn. This would be scooped into the feeder and then plugged with the groundbait.
The match started and after 20 minutes I saw one of my local hero’s, Mr John Small, slip the net under something at peg 11 which gave me some hope of a few bites. Just after the 30 minute mark my tip dropped back and I was into something substantial. In the fast swelling river this fish felt massive but after a couple of minutes up popped a big skimmer of about 2lb 12oz! A nice start, and my excitement was in overdrive. I started chirping up about it being bagging time and then back came the tip again. This felt different, very much like an eel, then all the weight went and I thought the hook had pulled! When the feeder came out of the water I could see that the hooklength looked considerably shorter! Gutted that I had been broken, it had done me about 6” from the loop. I’m still not convinced that it was a barbel but I have caught a few out of the tidal that fight in a strange manner until they see the net. I then changed to 0.21 dia to insure that didn’t happen again, still using the same size 10. On the hour mark I had another positive bite which I missed and on the next drop it went straight away. This time a perch of about 1 lb popped up, I was now in full swing and rumours were that 5 anglers in a row in the 50’s at Laughterton were catching a bream a chuck. I now had to concentrate on winning this section! My young apprentice, Joe Fitzgerald, was keeping me informed of what was happening in the rest of my section and it sounded pretty rosy with only the odd roach being caught and no one admitting to more than a couple of pound. The next couple of hours were very slow as the river was starting to pick up pace with the rain water that was now coming through it from all the rain that we had on the Friday. As the pace picked up the 4oz feeder was beginning to roll and the rubbish that was travelling through the river was becoming a nuisance. As the feeder began to roll more often I was starting to get snagged up nearly every other cast resulting in me running out of lobworms with about 1½ hours of the match remaining. I decided to go for a walk and scrounge some lobbies. 2 pegs downstream on peg 6 was another of my running water heroes and Trent legend, Wayne Swinscoe. I stopped for a chat and pinched a few of his worms. We were having a bit of a moan about conditions and all the rubbish passing through the river. Swinno had only had one bite which was a barbel of 2½lb and he was saying that there wasn’t much being caught below him other than the odd small fish but he had seen someone playing a large fish further down. Upon investigation it turned out to be a large barbel that had broken my mate Josh Read, on peg 3. The rest of the match was very slow and I managed a perch of 2oz and a roach of about 6oz at the death. ‘These fish would take me to just over 4lb’, I thought. I stuck to my guns with big gear all day and lobworm hookbait. I thought at the end that I may have done enough to win the section until my mate, Steve Gilbert at the next peg, wanted to show me what he had caught before chucking back and going for a pint: 3 roach for over 2½lb the smallest being about 8oz! Now I was in a bit of a panic as I knew John Small was admitting to 10 roach for 3½lb (you usually double what he tells you!). I replied that it would be 6lb to which I got a response of “shut up, how can it possibly be that much?”. I followed the scales and had a chat with Swinno who had caught 3 big skimmers late on to go with his barbel, so this would definitely win the section. From further conversations with anglers at Laughterton, I was being told that the anglers bagging bream was a myth and that it had been hard down there, so I was hoping that Swinno may weigh enough to frame. Swinno eventually weighed 11lb 3oz, which was miles in front of anyone. When the scales got to me, my sultry 4 fish weighed 4lb 5oz which placed me 2nd in section with John Small yet to weigh. Everyone else was weighing around the 3½ – 4lb barrier with half a dozen roach. Smalley tipped his fish on the scales and sure enough 6lb bang on, to which he looked at me and said “I didn’t think I had that”……. hmmm! On reflection of the day I feel I had approached the peg far too aggressively with my big hook, hooklengths and bait. Swinno had caught all his skimmers on double caster and Smalley had caught most of his fish by chopping and changing. A lesson was hopefully learned as I’m sure that there were a few more fish in my peg to be caught and, with the bonus skimmer in my net, I could easily have beaten 6lb. Back at the headquarters I started checking all the results: 1st place was Lincoln Whisby AS angler Bill White with 14lb 5oz, consisting of 1 bream and 5 skimmers. Bill was pegged on 54 at Laughterton which were new pegs introduced this season. In 2nd was Lincoln angler Dave Bontoft from peg 12 with 12lb 10oz. Dave had a chub of 4lb, some skimmers and roach. Joint 3rd was that man Wayne Swinscoe (Maver Bait-Tec) and Andy Starkey (Derby) with 11lb 3oz.
Roll on tomorrow so I can put into practice what I learnt today! 😮 😮 😮