Somerset 2010 Part 2 - River Axe

Monday was a washout and became a shopping day, so session 2 was on the Tuesday. My mother had an afternoon bingo session lined up in Weston-Super-Mare, so I headed in that direction to meet up with Kev later in the day.

The River Axe at Bleadon is only a short drive from W-S-M, so I decided to give it a shot. There's a sluice gate at the road bridge and I used to prefer to fish the section below it. However, it got took over by a private club a few years ago, so I had to fish the much wider and deeper stretch above it.















It wasn't as deep as normal though due to the sluice gate being knackered - something I'd been told about by the old boy in the tackle shop. That had left the river much deeper below the sluice, but 2-3ft shallower above it. There was still a good 9ft of water though. The bank in the photo below is normally under water and fishing has to be done from the platforms. If I'd fished off the platforms on this occasion, I'd have been 4ft above the water!

















The session wasn't terribly productive for whatever reason and bites were at a premium - quite unusual round these parts. I managed the odd fish though, but having stuck a bit of groundbait out, I was hoping to get amongst the Bream, but they failed to show up.
















Aside from the Roach (above) and a Hybrid of about 8oz the only thing of note was an Eel of 1lb 9oz, that I neatly lip hooked - you can even see the maggot in the photo!


















Annoyingly for me, I now seem to be be running up a number of non counting fish for our challenge! Rules are rules though and to be fair, I do spend more time on the bank than Brian, so it's only right that we only count fish caught during joint ventures.

Rain set in for the day and I gave up the ghost when Kev had to leave to collect my mother from the bingo. Even Murphy was happy to get back into the dry - quite unusual for a spaniel!