my first ever river match, and my last , what a disaster

[brummiephil]

when I fish with my local club I have had some good results, always there or there about.

to be fair I would rather have come last on a commie with a few more bits, it was boring. I fished a commie three weeks ago and had a bad day. only 20 fish but lots of bites.

there are people that love rivers and will moan on about commies all day long, and that's fair enough, you can bloody well have them to your self
its commies for me from now on.

and before all the old gits start banging on about matches/fishing being easy on commies , come and fish one !!

 

[Peter Jacobs]

there are people that love rivers and will moan on about commies all day long, and that's fair enough, you can bloody well have them to your self its commies for me from now on. and before all the old gits start banging on about matches/fishing being easy on commies , come and fish one !!

I fish both and manage to do well enough on either but then I've had many years experience on these venues.

It does take a whole different approach however on a river to a commercial lake w.r.t. feeding, methods and style of fishing.

Truly good anglers; thinking of the likes of Gardner, Scotthorne, Porter et al, can turn their hands to a framing weight on either venue.

In many respects it seems that you have been very disappointed in your river match, which is a shame, however, that said and understood maybe it is a little churlish on your part to take this attitude to rivers and river anglers . . . . . . ?

 

[Jamesy]

But isnt the point of a match to catch the biggest weight no matter how difficult the conditions? Isn't that the skill that brings the reward? I can understand pleasure fisherman wanting easy catches on commercials, but not match Anglers.

 

[brummiephil]

But isnt the point of a match to catch the biggest weight no matter how difficult the conditions? Isn't that the skill that brings the reward? I can understand pleasure fisherman wanting easy catches on commercials, but not match Anglers.

i used to fish the Avon 20 years ago when it was in its pomp
and used to catch 25 30lb of fish on a regular basis

when the total match weight was less than 5lbs you know there is a serious problem. and there were some very good river anglers on the match

 

[itsfishingnotcatching]

when the total match weight was less than 5lbs you know there is a serious problem. and there were some very good river anglers on the match

Without pretending that all is perfect on the rivers, have we not all fished commercials (or the Damn Flask!) and blanked?

 

[chub_on_the_block]

I think that variety is the key for me. If i was still fishing club matches I would enjoy the different challenges that different venues bring - as Jamesy rightly points out. I would have my favourites, but over the course of the season it would be the variety that keep me going. It is alarming though that a river that used to produce solid weights is now a scratch-all.

 

[peter crabtree]

i used to fish the Avon 20 years ago when it was in its pomp
and used to catch 25 30lb of fish on a regular basis

when the total match weight was less than 5lbs you know there is a serious problem. and there were some very good river anglers on the match

So it was hard for everyone then. I enjoy the challenge of match fishing whatever the venue, be it a river, canal, commie whatever....
We all remember when rivers produced good weights but things have changed.
5lb of fish would be acceptable to me on a hard day on a river.
If you only want to catch big weights so be it. Leave it to the good river anglers and old gits to fish and accept you will get beaten until you are as good as them.

 

[Tee-Cee]

Just think how hard it would be if you had to fish todays matches with the old 'size limit' when every fish had to be measured before it was weighed. From memory roach had to be 8", Dace 7", Bream 12", Tench 10" Perch 9" and so on. Bleak, Ruffe, and Gudgeon didn't reach the scales....
I don't remember when it became 'all in' and everything caught was weighed but I'm sure others will remember?

Yes, we may well be 'old gits' now but IMHO fishing for decent size fish way back when took skill to build a bag of good fish. NOT to say that whipping out 20lb of bleak or weighing in loads of F1's, (as someone told me yesterday that he'd come third in a match with two ruffe ) doesn't take skill but I know what I would rather fish for....

Yes, many blanked, but I witnessed some staggering catches of quality fish from the Little Ouse, Thames, Hants Avon , Great Ouse etc etc caught by highly skilled anglers......

 

[brummiephil]

So it was hard for everyone then. I enjoy the challenge of match fishing whatever the venue, be it a river, canal, commie whatever....
We all remember when rivers produced good weights but things have changed.
5lb of fish would be acceptable to me on a hard day on a river.
If you only want to catch big weights so be it. Leave it to the good river anglers and old gits to fish and accept you will get beaten until you are as good as them.

there were some very good river anglers on that match and even some very old gits and they caught ****** all as well, they were moaning more than me
trust me I did everything I could to catch a fish, but they were not there. I am not bother about a big river weight, a few more than 5 or so bites would have been nice.

one guy that came second in the BAA ' big un' , so no river slouch, had one fish I bite and with 2 oz.

so if any one remembers the BAA big uns and the numbers that used to fish them they will know this guy can fish

 

[Peter Jacobs]

there were some very good river anglers on that match and even some very old gits and they caught ****** all as well, they were moaning more than me
trust me I did everything I could to catch a fish, but they were not there. I am not bother about a big river weight, a few more than 5 or so bites would have been nice.

one guy that came second in the BAA ' big un' , so no river slouch, had one fish I bite and with 2 oz.

so if any one remembers the BAA big uns and the numbers that used to fish them they will know this guy can fish

Would it therefore be more appropriate for you to be more upset with the organisation rather than the "river"?

If there were anglers of that calibre fishing on the day then surely whoever arranged the fixture on that given venue should shoulder the full blame rather than "rivers" in general as your posts seem to indicate . . . . . . . . . .

Just a thought . . . . . . .

 

[Ray Roberts]

I think you just had a bad day, it happens. You can fish a venue and it looks great and then for one reason or another it fishes really poorly on the day or it could just be a poor venue.

I used to fish club matches on the Medway and the only merit that the organiser looked for when pegging a stretch was how close it was to the local pub, I fished some real gruellers there and although I won a few I don't think I ever had a good days fishing. It doesn't have to be that way though and although I don't match fish any more, I do keep an eye on my present clubs results and they seem to be doing pretty well on the rivers.

 

[Merv Harrison]

Many years ago on the Trent, on one of our works club matches, a top angler on the 'professional' circuit at the time, Barry Rudge, came along.

He set up, piled in a load of maggots/hemp/casters, and then said, "I'm going to the pub for a couple of hours they'll be ready then".

A few had been catching here and there, but when he came back as the saying goes, 'he emptied the River', unbelievable display.

That sort of knowledge is perfected among the elite and is 'learnt' over many years.

 

[badgeroo]

Hi!
I used to fish that stretch many years ago and it was hard going then, and for me the challenge would be going back there again and beating your last result.
besides you would probably get bored fishing matches on some of the commercial fisheries as the only skills required are how much feed you can get in at one go and how much help you would need to lift your net out at the end!!
I used to love fishing canal matches where you had to fight for every ounce caught- great stuff!
tight lines

 

[chefster]

Hi!
I used to fish that stretch many years ago and it was hard going then, and for me the challenge would be going back there again and beating your last result.
besides you would probably get bored fishing matches on some of the commercial fisheries as the only skills required are how much feed you can get in at one go and how much help you would need to lift your net out at the end!!
I used to love fishing canal matches where you had to fight for every ounce caught- great stuff!
tight lines

That would,nt be much of a challenge,seeing as how he only had 5 bites....so you think the only skill required in fishing commercials is piling in baitcome and fish some of my opens and see how you get on

 

[peter crabtree]

Hi!
commercial fisheries as the only skills required are how much feed you can get in at one go and how much help you would need to lift your net out at the end!!

Lmao...
When did you last fish a match on a commie?

Agree about the canal matches though..

 

[markv]

Chaps...no, no, nooooooo...

Please don't let this descend into a whats best commies or rivers etc.

Each to their own, whatever floats yer boats eh lads.


Fishing can be all things to all people, thats part of the beauty of it.

I fish the Warwickshire Avon a lot (fish commercials too).

One thing I will say is some sections can be very hard, luckily most of the places I fish usually fish well, with plenty of bites. I liken it to canal fishing on a river, that gives you an idea of the size of fish I catch. I love it.

However, there are days when you'd swear there wasn't a fish in the there, if you didn't know better from previous visits ! Crackers really, but that's fishin', always has been.

The thing is... don't let it get to you. I can't understand the angry bit, although i've seen it a lot.

Chinn up Brummie mate (and i'm one of those as well). Leave the rivers alone if they're not for you and do your own thing, as you said you will of course. There's always next week

 

[silvers]

Personally, I would encourage you to give river matches another go .... But be careful on the venue chosen!

The warks Avon is a fickle river, the stretches around Evesham even more so. The chub are long gone and there's not many dace .... So it's a case of targeting roach, perch, eels and bream .... All of which are not very dependable. Just take the crown meadow as an example. It's still got a lot of roach in it, as proven by results with bloodworm or when the river is "spot on", but sometimes you'd believe that all the roach have been teleported away!

The upstream end around Warwick is more reliable, but even here has been very Peggy this season. Last year I caught lots of roach, whereas this year I've hardly seen one (even on hemp).

As another example, I fished a match a couple of years back in autum on a decent peg - but couldn't buy a bite on maggot. I had 2 or 3 little fish. Remembering an old trick, I started to trickle loose fed pinkies on the same stick float line and suddenly started to pick up odd decent dace. If I had carried on with maggots I'd have thought the peg devoid. Changing from 0.1 hooklengtj to 0.07 can have the same effect sometimes.