Evesham Championship Qualifier.

Evesham Town & Ferry Waters

76 Fished.

Clive Branson has won the first of this season’s Evesham Championship qualifiers, with a 16-4-0 net. The former World Champion made the most of the fancied peg 35, to record a chub and perch net caught exclusively on waggler tactics.

He commented: “I am on a great run of form at the minute, pulling out some very nice pegs, and when peg 35, the Avon’s confluence with the River Isbourne stuck to my hand, I was over the moon. It is often a good draw early season. I knew that chub and perch would be the target, so waggler and maggot was my main attack.

With the river clear, and little cloud cover, I expected a tough session, so I started off feeding just four maggots each run down and fishing a single maggot on the hook. A few perch followed, before my first chub put in an appearance. I soon worked out that the key to keeping the chub coming was varying my feed however. I had to keep ringing the changes to keep fish coming. Frustratingly, I lost a few fish in a snag as well, had I landed those I would have weighed well over 20lb.”

One Evesham’s whiskery residents accounted for second spot, as Mike Dcaccia weighed in a barbel from peg 43 for 8-13-8. Mike caught the barbel on flatfloat tactics.

Hemp roach made up Middy ace, Joe Oakes’s third placed net. Drawn on peg 10, Joe caught quality fish on the long pole.

Result:

1 Clive Branson (Cardiff Nomads) 16-4-0 (peg 35)

2 Mike Dcaccia 8-13-8 (peg 43)

3 Joe Oakes (Middy) 6-4-0 (peg 10)

4 Nick Cowling 5-7-0 (peg 51)

5 Mike Bedding (Sensas WB Clarke) 4-1-0 (peg 51)

6 Hadrian Whittle (Sensas) 3-12-0 (peg 40)

Qualifiers:

Clive Branson

Nick Cowling