Riverfest!
Cold water ruined sport on the second leg of the final, but by then Mike Bedding had built a convincing lead...
Winter river secrets
Mike Bedding – Angling Trust RiverFest 2017 champion, 50-7-0 dace and chublets, River Wye, Hereford
RIVERFEST is the culmination of a year of intense top-flight river match angling. The year 2017 saw Shakespeare Bait-Tech man Mike Bedding lift the trophy with a combined two day weight of 50-7-0 on the Wye, just 15oz clear of second-placed Sam Merry.
Sunday’s match proved an anticlimax as cold water going into the river ruined the fishing, but 24 hours earlier Mike went a long way to winning the title with a 41-10-0 net of dace and chublets from peg 77 on the famed railings just upstream of the old railway bridge, which also won the match overall on the day.
“At the draw I felt that peg 77 was a good one for around 20lb. I’d have taken that because it was in Zone A, traditionally the harder of the two on the final when many pegs can blank,” Mike said.
“Having the last peg downstream before the bridge meant I had more room, and my plan was to catch on the Bolo rod down the middle of the river, on the long whip to hand and perhaps on the stick float close in for the final hour – but it turned out that the Bolo was the best of them all.”
Discounting a groundbait approach, Warwick-based Mike loosefed hemp and maggots on that line smack down the middle of the river, fishing maggot on the hook under a 4g Bolo float.
He soon clicked into gear, taking most of his 101-fish net by running the float no more than 20 yards down the swim.
“I knew I’d got a good weight, perhaps around 30lb, and I’d have taken that from Zone A, so to finish with 41lb was more than I could have asked for,” he said.
“What I didn’t know was that Sam Merry, who was on the peg above me, had caught well and I’d only ended up 6oz in front of him!
“With Zone B to come, and 40lb in the bag, I felt I was in a matchwinning situation,” he said – and so it proved.