Thousands of bleak landed in amazing Wye match
Of all the fish you can be plagued by in a match, bleak have to be the worst of all – but try telling that to Steve Maher and Trevor Chalk after they whipped out literally thousands of these tiny fish to take first and second on a rising River Wye recently!
You see bleak don’t weigh much and often take a bait intended for roach and chub but faced with a river that came up several feet during a winter league round at Hereford, the two men got stuck in with whip tactics to weigh in 46-8-0 and 33-4-0 respectively.
The match saw Steve finish the day standing up to fish owing to the rapidly rising levels while Trevor was adamant there were fish topping behind his box such were the sheer numbers of bleak in his swim, Trevor counting 1,250 fish in his final tally, so god only knows how many Steve ended up with!
“The peg I drew – 92 – has been brilliant for roach and dace on a normal river and I did begin fishing for them but soon got plagued by bleak and caught next to no roach,” Steve said.
“That made my mind up after half an hour to go all-out for bleak on a 3m whip with maggot and they got bigger as the match went on and came shorter too. However, I had to keep moving my seatbox back up the platform with the rising water and in the end, I threw everything on top of the bank and stood up to fish with 90 minutes to go.”
“This wasn’t quite as good, but the big bleak kept coming and after catching solidly for four hours and at the end I was genuinely interested in just what they’d all weigh so to win the match with them was satisfying and rewarding for all the hard work!” he added.
Trevor was further down the stretch at peg 64, a noted bleak peg that was full of fish from the word go and he went for them straight away, aiming to catch a big weight with a 1,000-plus fish target fishing the whip at 2m and 270 of them in the opening hour was on the pace, a speed that never relented as he finished with well over four figures in terms of fish numbers and second in the match.
