River Fest 2013 Date Released And A Fun Day Out

A warm welcome to this weeks blog update and as I promised in the previous update I bring some more information around the River Mania Idea of Dave Harrells.  First of all the name the angling trust have come up with for the competition is River Fest 2013 and here is the press release that was issued earlier this week with venues for the qualifiers and dates.

ANGLING TRUST RIVERFEST 2013 - WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT? 

A brand new competition, which will carry the biggest ever individual river competition first prize of £10,000, plus more big main list and section cash prizes in the final gets underway in July.

RiverFest 2013 is the brainchild of river expert Dave Harrell who has been working closely with the Angling Trust to put the competition in place. Twenty qualifiers of 60 anglers on various river venues around the country will see three anglers from each match qualify for a two-day weight aggregate final on the fish rich River Wye at Hereford on the weekend of November 2nd and 3rd 2013.

Dave Harrell said: “While it’s been great to see some big money events created on commercial fisheries over the past few years, natural fishing has been largely ignored. This new competition is an idea I’ve been thinking about for a while and it’s now going to happen thanks to the involvement of the Angling Trust.”

“The response to date has been fantastic as river match organisers from all over the country have come forward, keen to get involved with the competition. We’ve got 20 qualifying matches this year and it is the Trust’s intention to make the competition even bigger in the years to come."

"We gave a lot of consideration to the choice of venue for the final and eventually settled on the River Wye as it’s a place that lends itself to various skills and methods. We felt this was important, as we didn’t want to alienate anyone who qualified by putting him or her on a venue where they had little or no chance of competing. With a two-day total weight final as well this will make it much fairer for everyone to compete. The main target species in the final will be chub, barbel, roach, dace and perch and approaches will include both float and feeder tactics depending where you draw.”

“We are now actively looking for a sponsor for the competition as we have a lot to offer in terms of company, or product exposure and promotion. Any interested party is invited to get in touch with me through my email address at: info@daveharrellangling.comin the first instance.”

Mark Lloyd, chief executive of the Angling Trust said: “We’re all very grateful to Dave for spearheading the launch of this new competition and for helping us launch it so rapidly. It’s an exciting new addition to our match calendar and we hope it will recruit some new members to the Angling Trust to support our work fighting to protect fish and fishing and recruiting the anglers of the future.”

From Tuesday 14th May entry forms to apply for the qualifying matches will be available from the Angling Trust, and a coupon will also be available in the two weekly angling publications. There will also be further details and entry details available on the Angling Trust website at www.anglingtrust.net

QUALIFIER DATES AND VENUES

JULY 20TH – RIVER YARE
JULY 21ST – GREAT OUSE, LITTLEPORT
JULY 28TH – RIVER CALDER, MIRFIELD
AUGUST 4TH – BRISTOL AVON, NEWBRIDGE AND SALTFORD
AUGUST 10TH – RIVER TRENT – TORKSEY, NORTH CLIFTON, SOUTH CLIFTON
AUGUST 17TH – RIVER SWALE, MORTON
AUGUST 18TH – RIVER URE, RIPON
AUGUST 18TH – RIVER TRENT, BURTON
AUGUST 31ST – RIVER TEES, BOWESFIELD
SEPTEMBER 1ST – RIVER DERWENT – BORROWASH AND DERBY.
SEPTEMBER 14TH – RIVER SEVERN, BRIDGNORTH
SEPTEMBER 15TH – RIVER SEVERN, BEWDLEY
SEPTEMBER 21ST – RIVER CALDER, ALTOFTS
SEPTEMBER 21ST – RIVER SEVERN, UPTON UPON SEVERN
SEPTEMBER 22ND – WARWICKSHIRE AVON, EVESHAM
SEPTEMBER 28TH – RIVER TRENT, BURTON
SEPTEMBER 29TH – RIVER THAMES, MEDLEY
OCTOBER 5TH – RIVER SEVERN, SHREWSBURY
OCTOBER 6TH – RIVER TRENT, LAUGHTERTON, NORTH CLIFTON
OCTOBER 12TH - WARWICKSHIRE AVON, EVESHAM

Please 'share' this on your own page and spread the word to your friends. And remember, Tuesday May 14th is the day that tickets go on sale!

There has also been a Facebook page set up on this link: https://www.facebook.com/AnglingTrustRiverfest

You can also follow the River Fest on Twitter by following @ATRiverFest2013

I was hoping to participate in this competition but looking at the venues on the list there isn’t a single river I have wet a line on.  I was hoping the River Dee or the River Ribble might have been on the list so I could enter a match with a bit of confidence.  The rivers above all seem to me like big fish rivers and with my river angling being mainly for silver fish like dace i could well turn up and draw the best barbell peg on the stretch and not know it sat happily fishing for dace.   I am going to give it a big mull over before the day the tickets go on sale so don’t be surprised if I change my mind.

On to this weeks fishing:-

For some time now there has been talk of my cousin and his mate coming fishing with us but each time the trip has failed to materialise for one reason or another but that changed this week when myself, my uncle Azzer, his eldest Alex and his mate Ric all decided to make the short journey to Flushing Meadows.  The angling experience ranged from my uncle who has been fishing for years to Ric who had never been fishing in his life before, we guaranteed him before we left he would be fed up of catching by the time 4pm came around.

We opted to fish the deep Marl pool at the far end of the fishery as there are only a few fishing pegs on here so by us spreading out a bit we would hopefully put off any other anglers and have the whole pond to ourselves.  I treated the session as a practise to make sure my carp rigs are working as I was lacking confidence in them due to the lack of runs on curlston mere so I decided to pretty much stick to fishing the carp rod on a bite alarm for the whole session.   My uncle was armed with a pint of maggots and luncheon meat and alex and ric the same and all had aspirations of catching a few fish. 

We arrived at the pool and whist setting up was treated to the sight of a hare crossing the field behind us and upon reaching half way across the field it must have noticed our presence and it bolted for the hedgerows, I nnever knew they were so large luckily I managed to capture this video below.

I had a rig ready-made so it wasn’t long before I was fishing and Alex was not too far behind me.  The job of setting up Ric landed in my uncle’s lap and he set him up on a small section of pole to fish close in for some silver fish and in no time at all he had opened his angling account with a nice roach.

Alex was also not far behind him with getting a fish on the bank.

Both alex and Ric continued to catch these roach at will with Ric having a particularly “cracking” morning on Azzer’s newly shortened pole and Alex becoming more extravagant with his casting into, sorry close to the trees.  As the morning progressed so did the quality of the fish and Alex started to get into some of the smaller carp in the pool.

After setting ric up on the rod and also untangling Ric’s rigs my uncle finally managed to get in some fishing and picked up this lovely tench early on in the session.

With all of us picking up some carp now Ric wanted to try his hand at trying to catch a carp so I sat him down on my peg and began to show him how to go about catching carp on the pole.  This is the first time I have showed anyone how to fish and I thoroughly enjoyed it from showing him how to set up to how to play this fish it was all good fun.  The swim ric was in had a big snag in under his feet so it was a real tough swim for a beginner to attempt to catch a carp from and together we proceeded to lose 3 carp to the snag but each time Ric picked up a bit more knowledge and was really learning how to play the fish and when to really apply some pressure.  The forth carp was not so lucky and with some really good angling Rick managed to land the best carp of the day and as you can see from the picture below he was over the moon and so was I, I never knew someone else catching a fish could give you so much pleasure.

As the session continued all of us picked up more carp and I personally was made up that the rig I was testing out was doing the business and catching me some carp, I think I ended the session on 5 or 6.  Below are some more pictures from the session.

I can honestly say it has been a long time since i have enjoyed a fishing session so much the banter was spot on with everyone taking their fair share of stick (well maybe Ric copped the lions share) and a good laugh was had all round and to top it off plenty of fish were landed, great session and i look forward to the next one.

Tll next week I leave you with a sunset picture from a after work session this week in pursuit of the carp, no one can say I don’t put the time in!

Till next week I wish you all

Tight lines

Danny

River Mania to Become A Reality??

A warm welcome to this week’s blog update and I start this week’s update by talking about a new river competition that is set to take place later this year with a working name of River Mania.   The idea of his competition is for River anglers to have a big money competition on a similar scale as the still water competition Fisho-Mania and is the brain child of the famous river match angler Dave Harrell.

The idea that is being suggested is to have 20 matches all around the country with 60 pegs in each match the 60 pegs will be split into 3 sections with the winner of each of those three sections going through to the final 60 peg match for the prize money.  The prize money being mentioned is up around £10,000 for the winner with good back up prizes if the participation levels throughout the whole country are high enough.  Obviously for a competition on this scale to work it is going to take some massive organisation by both angling clubs and match organisers and I am pleased to say it seems that enough angling clubs have contacted Dave allowing their waters to be used for the idea to be passed over to the Angling Trust for serious consideration.

Fishing the banks of my local river every week it is easy to see how low in popularity river angling has become compared to the busy still waters and commercials and it is not too hard to notice when you are one of the youngest faces on the bank.  The arm of river angling has declined from what it was many years ago and there are sections of rivers that once where lined week in week out with anglers that now have one or two pegs on them with the rest completely reclaimed by nature. I know of two places this is the case on the River Dee and I also know from fishing the river that apart from the busy winter venue I fish that me and my uncle only saw a handful of other anglers on the bank during the whole of our summer campaign. 

I myself have never fished a river match before but I would certainly be looking to take part in this competition as I feel it will be not only a really exciting experience but I would love to be part of something that I believe will really help the promote river angling in this country and in time I really think we will look back at this competitions introduction as a moment that possibly changed river angling in this country.  I know there are a few river anglers who read this blog so let’s try and spread the word about this fantastic competition and get this idea as much support as possible as at the end of the day it is only us anglers that can make it a success.

More information on venues and prize money is expected to be released shortly so check out the link below for more information as it breaks.

For more information check out Dave Harrell’s Facebook page here: http://www.facebook.com/DaveHarrellAngling

Dave also talks about this idea in this interview released a week or so back:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JZqVvzomX0

This past two weeks the blogs mini carp blog has taken a front seat and I have been putting my exploits up on there, baiting up and my first session are on there so far along with some information on my plan for the rest of this year’s quest so feel free to check it out on the page bar at the top of the blog or on the following link.

10lb car quest mini blog: http://satonmyperch.blogspot.co.uk/p/10lb-carp-mini-blog.html

As part of this mini blog I have found myself returning home just as the sun is setting and it has presented me with a perfect opportunity to capture a few pictures of the local nature reserve and the Mersey estuary.

On to this weeks fishing:

Friday afternoon was spent enduring a cold blank in pursuit of the carp for the blogs mini blog so come Saturday I was determined to get a few bites and that float going under so I decided to put my faith in my local commercial Flushing Meadows.   I actually called in this place last weekend and the pool I fished in this update was frozen solid with no chance of fishing it as you can see below.

With this in mind I arrived on the banks of flushing a few hours later than normal and it was gone 9am by the time I settled in my peg.  There were a few other anglers on the pool when I arrived and the peg I had wanted to fish was taken so I settled on a peg on the far margin on the above photo, I picked this peg as it gave me plenty of margin to go at and the option to fish deeper water straight out in front of me.

My plan for the day was to fish solely maggot and fish it high up the shelf to see if any carp where willing to feed the weather was surely warm enough for carp with clear blue skies and the warm sun on my back I was confident of picking up at least one.

The action was really slow and it seemed an age to even get the roach going let alone any carp but eventually I managed to get the roach feeding and was rewarded more with numbers of fish than quality but at least the float was going under.

The roach continued to come in fits and starts and it was noticeable the angler on the back of the island was having a really good day and catching a lot of carp, this can be the case on flushing meadows at times and myself and my uncle have had many a session on there where one of us has been bagging up on nice carp while the other is scratching around with bits.

The sun on my back and the float going under steadily I was a happy man but I just felt I should have been picking up a carp if they were feeding so ferociously for the other angler so with around a hour and a half of the session left I began to up the feed rate and really pile in some maggots hoping to prey on the greedy nature of the carp.  A few small roach and eventually I got what I was hoping for as the elastic melted from the end of the pole tip what I hadn’t remembered to change my top kit to a thicker elastic and it became really obvious early on in the fight that I was connected to a decent carp and that I was in for a long battle on only blue hydro elastic.

The fish was in no doubt as to who was in charge in this exchange as it powered from left to right and back again, I did all I could to gain control of the fish by submerging the tip of my pole in the water to increase the strain on the fish and I managed to turn the fish a few times from reaching the other anglers, I was in a right mess!!  Eventually I got the carp under my feet and I saw how big it was and I estimated it to be around 5-7lb and I must say around 5 minutes into this fish my arm was beginning to ache and as one of the other anglers commented “its having none of it”. 

The fish was getting to the stage when it was beat and I had the fish under some type of control and all of a sudden the line flew back at me, it baffles me at times how a fish can impart so much pressure on the hook at still not come off yet the stage in the battle where the fish is under control but still on a tense elastic the hook pops out.  I must say I was gutted as it would have been the first carp of the year and I knew in the conditions it could have been my only chance of a carp in that session.

The session continued to count down to its end and as time was just about to be called I struck into another strangely delicate bite and was connected to another carp but it was not in the same league as the previous one and armed with white hydro elastic it was soon in the landing net and on the bank.  It was a strange looking carp as it didn’t look like a common carp or a mirror but more like a really big crucian mixed with a common.

It was only when turning the fish over for a picture of its other side I noticed the fish only had one eye.

This was the last action from the trip and I must admit after the hard session the night before I was happy to get a few bites and left the fishery with my fishing itch well and truly scratched for another week.

This weekend I am hoping to get out on the bank both days, Sunday I will be on the carp quest as it is forecast to be the warmer day and I am undecided at the moment as to whether to go to flushing meadows or visit a water on the WAA card.

Till next week I wish you all

Tight lines

Danny