Warwickshire Avon Pensham Sunday 14/10/12

This Sunday saw us on the Pensham stretch of the Avon for a Cradley Heath club match, I have not fished for more years than I care to remember this stretch is slower and deeper than the the next stretch upstream which is Pershore, Pershore is more noted as Chub, Barbel & Roach venue where Pensham is more Bream & Roach. As per usual the rain gods had decided to do there dance in the week leading up to this match leaving the river up and coloured, looking on the web cams it looked up around 18 inches to me but when we got there I would say it was more like 2ft. I drew a peg just below the car park that looked like it had a bit of slack water but on closer inspection the cut away bank below me was just boiling over and didn't look very inviting at all, it looked like there was something just below the surface which without the extra water on would probably be above the water. I just set up one pole rig with a 5gram flat float to be fished at 6m just below me which was just out of the main flow and a small openend feeder, I planned to fish chopped worm & maggots on the pole line with worm, cater & maggot in the feeder with a little amount of groundbait to hold it all in.
To cut a long story short the match was crap for most I messed about with the pole for around half an hour before throwing it up the bank as it don't think that the bait was on the bottom for more than 5 seconds before the water erupted lifting the float out of the water!, I had a massive 14 eels ( sorry elvers they were that small ) and one daddy ruff for 2lb 2oz no matter what I put on the hook or what size hook I put on tiny eels was all that I could catch. John below me had 3-4 eels and half a dozen bits for 1lb 6oz and Baz Robson below him had 3-4 Roach plus eels to beat me by 8drams for 2lb 2oz 8drams. The match was won by Martin Yardsley on upstream peg one opposite the last couple of pegs on Pershore with 3 Bream for 12lb on the pole and he lost another, Ollie was 2nd with one good Bream and two smaller ones for 9lb on the feeder, Shaun was 3rd with one bream for 2lb 12oz, for most less than 1lb was the norm on a very hard and rising river. Baz managed to scrape in 4th leaving me winning the section it was just a shame that there was so much water on as in the right conditions there would have been a lot more fish caught.