9,300lb of silvers banked in roach bonanza!
An incredible 9300lb of river fish have been caught in matches over the last week, the bulk of which have been made up of pristine roach and dace.
The catches came in this year’s Wye and Bann festivals, and will live long in the memory of local anglers.
In Hereford, over 3800lb of fish were caught over the prestigious three-day long Wye Festival, with each angler averaging a fantastic 21lb a day, as well as lots of roach over the 2lb mark being landed.
River expert Dan Ashington went home with the trophy, but it was under 25s World Number One, Rory Jones, who topped the individual catches with a thumping 97lb bag of roach and dace on the first day.
Drawing a peg on the tennis courts section, Rory was on a swim where he’s had mixed results in the past…
“I’d actually drawn the peg three times previously, and have blanked twice and landed four chub the other time.
“It can however produce when there is extra water on, but it turns into a really strange swim to fish.
“It becomes a massive eddy, meaning that it flows the wrong way a lot of the time!”
Rory went with his usual positive approach, cupping in groundbait seven metres out laced with hemp, caster and chopped worm, and it wasn’t long before Rory was into fish.
“In the first three minutes I will have had 6lb. It was solid with quality roach averaging two fish to the pound, and I also had two that will probably have gone 5lb between them.”
After catching a roach a chuck for the first hour and 10 minutes, the peg suddenly went quiet when an unwelcome guest entered the swim:
“I saw something big in the water, and at first I thought it was a Labrador that somebody had let in the river, but then the head of a huge otter popped up and stared at me.
“This really put the roach off, so I started feeding groundbait by hand and caught dace instead.
“It turned out to be a phenomenal day, and if it wasn’t for that otter a weight of 130lb would have been on the cards.”
Rory finished third overall, and caught his first double figure barbel as well as a 2lb 9oz roach on the other days in the festival.
Anglers also enjoyed phenomenal silverfish sport over in Northern Ireland, where over 5500lb of roach were landed during the Wild on the Bann and the Bann Bonanza Festivals.
Individual weights were up to 31kg on the more productive days and were made up of pristine roach averaging 4oz with the odd better specimen up to 1lb 4oz chucked in.
Event organiser Derek Buckley told Angling Times: “It’s been a great couple of weeks on the Bann, when the river runs clear the fishing can be brilliant.
“We had two days of rain towards the end of the second week which caused the river to rise and slowed the sport down, but before that the average weight was 13kg-plus with every angler having a fish over 1lb in the net.
“I would recommend people come and visit, based on current form the Bann is probably one of the best rivers in Europe in my opinion.”
The whip was also key in silverfish weights on the Bann, with a 4g float fished at 6m over a ball of groundbait laced with hemp, maggots and casters the most effective tactic.
