I always try and do something a little different every year like fishing a new venue or trying to qualify for one of the many different big competitions and on Sunday I combined both when I booked into the Colmic SWKoC qualifier on the River Kenn. The King of Clubs is the brainchild of Russ Hilton and I think it’s a brilliant idea, decent size matches on natural venues offering local clubs a chance to showcase their waters and the fishing on offer while also giving anglers of all abilities the opportunity to qualify for a final with a big prize pot, what’s not to like? I’m just amazed more local clubs haven’t got on board to help promote match fishing on natural venues in the South West. Colmic are also supporting the event and putting up some fantastic prizes for the final.
I’ve been wanting to fish the Kenn for a while now as it’s holds some big bream (Kev Perry had two of 8lb+ and 9lb+ in a recent match) and tench plus quality roach and perch. I got to the draw in plenty of time and as others began arriving, there were quite a few faces I recognised including Mark Bartlett, Tony Goodland, Ivan Currie, Kev Perry, Dom Sullivan and Mark Birdseye among others.
Match organiser Foggy welcomed everyone and explained the 29 anglers would be split into two zones with the winner of each qualifying for the final and then within each zone, there would be two mini sections. Asking around, the general consensus was that the winner would come from the early pegs so when I pulled out A8, hopefully it was the right sort of area. Kev very kindly showed us where to park in a housing estate where we could cut through to the river – cheers mate.
The pegs were all lovely and comfy and the club obviously work really hard to make sure the swims are fishable. The river itself was quite wide, very clear and with hardly any flow, it was very drain-like and reminded me of places like the KSD or Stathe, there were bushes and lilies across and quite a few small fish topping.
I set up a little feeder to fish towards the far bank cover along with a 1 gram pole rig to fish at just 10 metres as the wind was pretty strong. Maggots, casters, hemp and worm on the side tray along with Bait-Tech Pro Natural Dark and Extra groundbait. On the whistle I had a few chucks across with a feeder to put some bait in and then potted two balls of groundbait on the pole line.
Kicking off on the feeder as normally bonus bream or tench are needed to do well, I thought it might take a while to get a bite but first chuck I had a violent rattle which didn’t develop further but when I reeled in there was a tiny roach on! Next cast I missed a small fish indication so put a worm on and had a positive pull which resulted in a 3oz perch, I had another but then couldn’t get a bite. As the first hour came to a close, I hadn’t added anything else to the net so had a look on the pole.
It wasn’t solid but after five minutes or so I had a chunky perch and was getting odd bites without pulling any trees up, Tony G who was above me on peg 10 went for a walk and said he was struggling and hadn’t got a pound yet. I had a couple of half decent roach and just landed a small eel as Tony appeared again. He reported that Foggy on peg 5 had a big bream and a couple of skimmers but nobody else was catching and the angler on the end peg hadn’t had a bite yet!
Feeding hemp and caster with double maggot on the hook I was starting to catch quite well and had another little eel, some more perch and a cracking roach of 8-10oz although I did pull out of a slightly better fish and dropped off a roach. At one stage I thought I might be able to put a decent weight together but heading into the final ninety minutes, my bites just fizzled out and another look on the feeder was equally unproductive.
I ended up with 22 fish and when the scales got to me, Foggy had won the section comfortably with 8lb 15oz but the next best weight was 1lb 6oz, my fish went 3lb 3oz which put me second in the section. Back at the results and Foggy had won the zone and qualified for the final so I won the section by default. Tony won B section with 2lb 1oz so I actually finished second in the zone but in reality, I was never going to qualify and to stand any chance I needed to stick it out for big fish like most had. Photos courtesy of Clevedon FWAC*
Foggy with a nice bream and skimmers for 8lb 15oz to win the match and qualify for the final*
Adam Beachgood won the other zone and qualified with 4lb 13oz which included a tench, Dom won the section with a tench of 4lb 6oz and Andy Laws was top in the other section with 2lb 5oz so a tough day for most.
Qualifiers Robert Fogg and Adam Beachgood*
Zone 1 Qualifier – Robert Fogg (Clevedon) – 8lb 15oz
Section A
1 – Jamie Rich (Bait-Tech/Colmic) – 3lb 3oz
2 – Simon Carvallo – 1lb 6oz
Section B
1 – Tony Goodland – 2lb 1oz
2 – Scott Smallwood – 13oz
Zone 2 Qualifier – Adam Beachgood – 4lb 13oz
Section C
1 – Dom Sullivan – 4lb 6oz
2 – Martin Allen – 4lb 3oz
Section D
1 – Andy Laws – 2lb 5oz
2 – Paul Randell – 1lb 12oz
I picked up £45 for winning the section and really enjoyed my first visit to the Kenn. I’m going to have another go at qualifying on the Parrett in a few weeks.
Also I can’t go without mentioning Russ again, he fished a teams of four match on the KSD today and had one of those red letter days that possibly only happen once in your lifetime, drawing an end peg upstream of Bradney, he spent an hour and a half catching some small fish before switching to the feeder and catching 30 bream for 110lb 14oz. Triple figures on a natural water doesn’t happen that often, a stunning day and it’s the venue for the SWKoC final later in the year which looks set to be a great match. Photo credit – Russ Hilton*
There’s still a great offer running if you fancy treating yourself to some new fishing gear, use the exclusive discount code AgainstMenandFish10 to get 10% off when you shop online at Somerset Angling
Also I still have copies of my book available from eBay here or Amazon here
And if you could spare five minutes to leave a nice review on Amazon, it would be very much appreciated.
Next up – Todber Manor
Coming soon – Lots more match reports
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