How I won big float champs
How did Dave Harrell maintain his pole position in the last round of the Severn Float Champs? Read on…
THE final round of the River Severn Float Championship at Bewdley saw conditions far from perfect. The water temperature had dropped three degrees in a week and the level was running at one metre, which was a foot or so higher than we wanted.
On the way to the match I was thinking about the various pegs I’d like to get, and when it was my turn to draw I pulled out peg 66, which was one of those on my wish list. I’d fished the peg several times in the past, albeit some 15 years ago when I used to live in Bewdley, and it’s always been a good swim for roach and dace.
It also holds a lot of barbel, but these tend to live in the middle of the river and the pace was just too much to fish out there.
I decided to fish a very cautious match and target myself to try and catch 10lb, as I felt sure this would produce a top 10 finish.
I set up two 14ft Daiwa Tournament RS 14F rods with matching TDR 2508 reels and 5lb (0.18mm) Pro Float lines.
The swim was only 7ft deep so on the first rig I set up a six No4 DH No2 Heavy Base sticks with strung-out No6 shot. I love these floats for big rivers. The heavy base makes them so easy to cast and far easier to control than a standard alloy stem stick float.
The shotting was simple, with strung-out No6 shots all through the line and a No8 on the hooklength. Hook was a medium wire size 18 to a 0.10mm hooklength.
My second rig comprised a 4g DH No2 Bolo float with an olivette around 18ins from the hook and a No6 shot about 10ins from it.
I also set up an 8m Airity system whip with a 2.5g DH16 float, shotted in the same way as the Bolo rig.
Groundbait was a bag each of Bait-Tech Pro Natural Dark and Pro Natural Extra, together with 1.5 litres of soil. Into this I would put very small amounts of casters and hemp and feed the whip line sparingly with small balls.
I suspected the day would be difficult, so I chose to loosefeed the swim very lightly with just six to 10 maggots every put-in.
After an hour, all I had to show for my efforts were a few tiny dace but at least I’d got some feeding fish in front of me. There were a number of anglers watching the match unfold in my area and they all confirmed what I had suspected under the conditions.
They told me that most of the competitors were struggling for bites and I felt confident that my cautious approach was the right way to continue the match. The second and third hours
brought me some small roach, together with some decent dace, all caught on double maggot, but I stayed disciplined on the feed because I felt I was on course for my target weight.
I’d been introducing small balls of feed since the start and had a few runs down on the whip every 20 minutes or so, but no bites were forthcoming.
This changed in the third hour, and I enjoyed a run of small dace to keep me on my target track.
The final two hours of the match were very hard. I kept switching between the rigs, although the Bolo rig was a waste of time on the day and all my fish were caught either on the whip or the strung-out stick rig.
By the end I’d fed around 1.5 pints of maggots and about half-a-pint of casters and hemp in groundbait. I knew I was short of my target and this was confirmed when the scales arrived and my fish went 8-6-0. It was now a waiting game to find out how my challengers had fared.
The match was won by Tony Moreton, who recorded a superb 16-5-0 of roach and dace on a light stick float rig from peg 77. Second place went to 18-year-old Jordan Holloway with 14-4-0 of chub from peg 14.
Only four double-figure weights were recorded – a far cry from the weights we’d all enjoyed in previous rounds.
Back at match headquarters I was relieved to find that my weight was eighth on the day, winning me £70 day money and the £1,000 top prize overall. I was delighted – it wasn’t easy against such quality opposition.