Alan Scotthorne is looking forward to the 1st Division National Championship being held on the River Trent this Saturday. Here the England star looks back on three recent matches on this historic venue. 

I have just fished three matches on the bounce on my favourite River Trent. I grew up fishing the river and must confess that it is better now than it has ever been. We tend to look back with rose-tinted glasses, but mark my words, there were a lot more matches won with less than 20lb than were won with more. Double figures of fish has always been a good weight on the river and, ok, there are more barbel and bream to elevate the weights but double figures on a float is still a great day’s fishing.

The first match I fished was a teams-of-five event on Friday. This took in most of the tidal stretches to be used in the National, and my Drennan Barnsley team was keen to do well. For me I was on a really difficult peg at North Clifton. With a very strong face wind it was hard just to fire out bait, let alone to get good presentation on this shallow peg!

Using the strongest orange Drennan Revolution Caty I could just about get hemp and maggots out on to the line I wanted to feed, but presentation on the float was difficult to achieve. With no bites on a feeder I struggled for 6lb 9oz of roach and finished halfway in the 18-peg section, but in a weird sort of a way I enjoyed battling for every fish.

On returning to the pub in Laughterton we discovered we had done well as a team. Lee Kerry won his section and the match with a fantastic 27lb of roach at Besthorpe, James Dent was 3rd at Dunham, Simon Fields was 3rd at Torksey and Eddie Brydon was well up at Laughterton, so we had in fact won the team event with a 26-point total. What was interesting there were no signs of the silver bream and skimmers that normally make up the weights. We had all caught roach.

Saturday’s match was again all on the tidal reaches, but this was more like fishing a normal river match as the tide was running out all day, the same as the day before. All that changed was that the river dropped around a foot as the match progressed.

Again I drew at Clifton, this time peg 46 above the bridge. With £80 for winning a section and a good overall for the top five in the match I still felt I had a chance to take home some coin. I fished a groundbait feeder for the first hour for nothing but hoped I would again catch some roach when I changed on to the waggler.

The wind was not as strong as the previous day but I still had to fish with a 3g straight Drennan Crystal Waggler to get reasonable presentation in the face wind, but could not get a bite. After 20 minutes of running through without a bite the float buried and I soon had a healthy 3lb chub in the net followed by one of 1lb+. From then on fishing just a size 21 Kamasan B711 to 0.095mm Supplex Fluorocarbon I started to catch odd roach.

At the end of the match I had amassed 9lb 9oz for an easy section win, but 14lb was needed to frame with 21lb of barbel winning the match from peg 30 at Laughterton. Again I had really enjoyed the match, just keeping it simple by feeding maggots and hemp and fishing maggot on the hook.

Sunday’s match again took in Laughterton, Dunham upstream on the Sheffield bank plus North Clifton. I was to draw upstream at Dunham and was pleased because it would give me a chance to fish the bolo for roach with much less wind forecast.

To tackle the 10ft deep swim I set up a 13ft Acolyte Ultra with a Crystal Waggler, a 15ft Acolyte Ultra with a 1.75g Drennan Alloy Stick Float and two bolo rods with 3g shotted rigs. Again hemp and maggots were fed as far as I could catapult them. I soon settled into a nice routine of swapping around rigs, depths and different ways of feeding until I was happy.

Catching mainly roach mainly and occasional dace I was a little disappointed at my catch rate and really struggled in the last hour. I felt that I had caught very little, so I was quite pleased and surprised when my catch recorded 10lb 140z on the scales. Another section win plus a bonus 3rd overall in the match.

I think the Angling Trust 1st Division National Championship this weekend will be a brilliant match. I am sure that individually it will be won on the feeder, but the winning team will need to be adept with all methods to score good points. I enjoyed all three matches I fished last week and it’s just great to fish my favourite river with float tactics again!