Tidal Trent Three Day Festival
I had the pleasure of fishing the Cadence Fishing UK tidal Trent festival recently. I was out to defend last years win, but as always, with an incredibly strong field it was going to be a tall order!
Day 1 – Dunham down peg 7. Not ideal, but this is what I love about big natural venues. You never know! It was a very tricky start on the feeder, but I managed to catch some roach on the bolo for 8lb. Andy Starkey’s bream catch and John Smalls roach weight beat me, but third in the section was not a disaster. Although it did put the pressure on with two section wins required now.
Day 2 – Peg 14 Laughterton. Not an area I fancied but I feel Laughterton is quite fair. Again the feeder was rubbish, I did catch a skimmer at the top of the tide, but I was going nowhere. I’d been feeding the float for a couple of hours and thankfully they were waiting for me when I went on it. There was some nice big fat roach amongst them on the bolo, and I finished up with 15lb – enough for the all important section win and 4th in the match.
Day 3 – Peg 26 North Clifton. This area has not fished very well this year and with the better pegs to my left I had work to do. The rascal Tom Scholey on the end caught a nice skimmer early which had me worried. The section fished really, really hard. It was a case of constantly changing things to nick the odd fish, but they were all tiny. I finished up with 7lb 6oz, enough to win the section again. This left with me five points overall.
Back at the draw I was really pleased to find out I’d managed second overall. Beaten to the top spot by my mate and all round angling legend Matt Godfrey. Awesome Angling mate! Big well done to Gavin Butler for third also.
A great weekend away with the lads with plenty of beer and laughs. Finally, a big shout out to Alan Henry and Ryan for running a faultless festival.
Tom Noton
Small fish on the bolo dominated my catches.
Skimmers mixed in with the roach were worth their weight in gold.