Dave Harrell
reports on how the River Thames Festival was won
AFEW years ago, during a conversation with River Thames expert Paul Glenfield, I suggested that the river around the Abingdon area would be perfect for a three-day midweek angling festival. Paul gave it some thought, and after much hard work the Thames Angling Festival was born.
DAY ONE – ABINGDON
For me, this year’s event started at Abingdon peg 15, and when I got there I realised that I was on the same peg that I’d caught 36lb of bream from on last year’s festival.
I set up 1g, 1.5g and 2g DH15 pole rigs with olivettes and the option of up to three No9 droppers. Hook was a size 18 fine wire to 0.10mm Pro Rig line and all the rigs were set at full depth, just touching bottom in 7ft of water.
Elastics were either No5 or No6, through the No2 and No3 sections of my 13m Daiwa Airity pole.
My feeder rig comprised a 12ft Daiwa Tournament RS 1213Q with 6lb mainline and a 3ft hooklength of 0.14mm tied to a size 14 medium wire hook.
At the start, I threw eight orange sized balls containing a handful of casters and hemp on the 13m line and decided to spend half-anhour in pursuit of bream on the feeder containing 50/50 Bait-Tech Halibut Marina Method Mix and brown crumb, with worm and red maggot or caster on the hook.
I kept the feeder going in every three or four minutes to start with and after 25 minutes a steady pull round resulted in me playing a near-4lb bream. Smaller skimmers followed on both pole and feeder, and my total of 14-10-0 put me third in the section.
DAY TWO – CULHAM
Peg 25 at Culham. An out-and-out pole match using the same rigs as I’d used on Day One in 10ft of water. By feeding a small ball of groundbait and casters every couple of minutes, I managed 12-0-0 for second in the section.
DAY THREE – APPLEFORD
Peg 23 at Appleford – a similar approach to how I’d fished the previous day but a bad idea, as the swim filled up with tiny bleak.
Despite catching a few decent roach my 5-14-0 total was well behind the section leaders.