Sunday 31/10/10 - Carps AC Autumn Silvers League - Viaduct Fishery - Round Four

I travelled alone again this week as Bela got “Boy Flu” and no Pinky Ponk Juice in my garage after the match either. Let’s hope he's better next week. Driving down today the trees and hedge rows were in full autumn colours - reds, greens, browns and gold’s this is because we haven’t had any real winds to take them away – let’s hope they stay as long as possible, it will be sad to see them go. Gordon Cannings had a scare this morning at 04:30 – John Bennett on his mobile outside Gordon’s house enquiring whether he had over slept – I wish they wouldn’t mess about with the clocks (it buggers me up for a few days) – so does Gordon!!

With a few anglers unable to fish John Bennett did his usual phoning around and managed to get the attendance up to thirty five – well done matey. I was hoping to be on Campbell (as did everyone else). It wasn’t to be, I drew peg 103 which was last in the section on the last league match. I was hoping that it would be an end peg, but it wasn’t Chris Davis had that, peg 105. With Tom Mangnel on the other end peg 98 in the section I knew it would be a difficult match to pick up in. The North wind was blowing down towards our end, which gave me some heart. I set up two Ronnie rigs which produced absolutely nothing. I set up 1 x Jolly which was somewhere between a 4x12 and 4x14 – that will be 4x13 then Mr Rixon. This was to be fished at 5 metres over GB and a 4x14 PB 14 (modified) to be fished long at 11.5 metres over caster. The Jolly also severed for under the LH tree where I planned to put in some CW&C as a tester. On the whistle I put in balls of GB laced with casters at 5 metres and a half pot of casters at 11.5 metres, I followed this up with half a pot of CW&C under the tree – I can finish this one off now - I caught one 2oz perch over this line on double dead red. I started at 5 metres with single caster and was getting some tentative touches followed by a very shy bite from small Skimmers – 4oz to 8oz. I had a run of them for about an hour – but it was slow. During this period Chris Davis snares a 4lb Tench which easily exceeded my net's worth. I re-fed with another ball of laced GB and tried the caster line at 11.5 metres with one 4 oz Skimmer to show for it after 15 minutes. This wasn’t good as this was my banker line. As I had done reasonably well over the laced GB I decided right or wrong to put two big balls in over this line before coming back in to 5 metres where I caught a few more small Skimmers. I make note of how angler’s fish and I could see that some of the Choppy men were struggling whilst others were having a few better Skimmers, but it was generally fishing hard. By swapping between the two lines I kept a few small Skimmers coming on single caster which kept me occupied until the end when I weighed in 13lb 9oz which was more that I expected. Not enough for any coin though, putting me fourth in the section and joint 14th overall with the Dude (Dan Squires) on peg 96. I really needed three or four good stamp Skimmers or Tench to put me up in the coin, but in didn’t happen.

Overall it was a very enjoyable close match.

The match was won by Stu Foale’s (pictured right sporting his new hair do) with 39lb 11oz from Campbell peg 131. Stu caught most of his fish in the second half of the match (as did most anglers find on Campbell). Stu caught the majority of his fish on worm over CW at 13 metres down his peg at 2 o clock. Stu’s catch included Bream, Tench and sizeable Perch. Well done matey that’s a well deserved win.

Full Result:
1. Stu Foale 39-11-0 peg 131
2. Rich Coles 20-09-0 peg 127
3. Steve Jackson 20-04-0 peg 119
4. Tom Mangnel 19-06-0 peg 98
5. Chris Davis 18-13-0 peg 105
6. Anton Page 16-14-0 peg 111
7. Mark Broomsgrove 16-02-0 peg 88 (again)