THE Warks Avon around Evesham, in partnership with the nearby Twyford section, welcomed 43 anglers for the Angling Trust’s 2022 Individual National – where three adjoining pegs on the Common section dominated.
Leading the day and taking the title was Cheltenham-based Andy Bruton, the Cadence Bait-Tech Superteam man weighing in 13-350 of pommies on the feeder from peg 6. Sensas Smithy’s rod Tom Boulton bagged second with 12-600 of skimmers and pommies on the tip from peg 3, Pete Mace rounding off the medal places with 9-500 at peg 5 for third.
Winner Andy takes up the story...
At the peg
“Peg 6 in the match is permanent peg 11, my favourite peg on the river! Normally, you’re looking at 10lb to 15lb off there, casting a feeder across for skimmers, so I saw no reason to do anything else.
“The first hour was a bit of a nightmare, as I missed loads of bites from small fish and never caught anything of note, while the angler next to me had landed 16 small skimmers by the time I finally got a 6oz pommie. I’d begun on a medium cage feeder cast to the far-bank shelf in about 8ft of water, fishing little pieces of worm, but I had to make changes because there were so many tiny fish about!
“My first move was to feed only chopped worm in the feeder and leave out the maggots and casters.
“I also changed to fishing either a whole or three-quarters of a worm to wait for a proper bite off a better fish.
“After three hours the opening line petered out, so I dropped to a smaller feeder and took 3m of line off the clip to fish into the deeper water closer in. Now the nights and days are a bit cooler, I reckon the fish have dropped into the deeper part of the river. It worked a treat, as I caught 12 pommies while others had very little.”
Going even deeper
“Once the anglers around me saw me catch, they went back on the feeder. My answer was to take another 3m off the clip to be fishing my own water back into even deeper water, as I got the impression that the fish were dropping closer to me as the day went on. Catching 14 pommies here was more than I could’ve hoped for, but I had no idea of my weight or what the others had got!”
The final reckoning
“At the end I felt I’d got 80 pommies for about 20lb. When Tom Boulton appeared and said he’d got at least 20lb I thought I’d be second at best, but I could hardly lift my net out and my fish went 13 kilos, which is close to 30lb! All I had to do then was wait for Tom to weigh in and then hope no-one else had caught well. They hadn’t, and I was home – what a brilliant day’s fishing.
“The Avon is full of fish – you just need to work very hard to catch them!”
Result: 1 A Bruton, Cadence Bait-Tech Superteam, 13-350; 2 T Boulton, Sensas Smithy’s MG, 12-600; 3 P Mace, Stratford AA, 9-500; 4 T Taylor, Birmingham, 9-060; 5 S Grange, 8-430; 6 K Woodfield, Sensas Black Country, 5-510.