Thursday 09/06/2011 - Viaduct Cost Cutter - Campbell and Carey

After another decent breakfast at the café shown right Bela and I were off to the “Skivers” match at Viaduct.

I was expecting to draw peg 88 on Carey as I seem to be working my way clockwise around this Lake. However, I was delighted when I pulled peg 116 again. Matey Bela pulled opposite peg 126 (Bela pictured right plumbing up his full depth waggler).

I had the Dude to my left on peg 115 and Dave Wride to my right on peg 118. I set up three rigs; 1 x 4x14 blue Jolly to be fished at 7 metres with peppered Spam, a 4x10 Drennen Chop for margin meat and my usual paste rig for both margins.

I have this theory that right handed (the vast majority) anglers throw there left over bait in to the right hand margin and the scrammy handed angler e.g Tony Rixon would throw theirs to the left. So today I would favour the RH.

I started as usual on the 8mm meat fished over peppered 6mm. It wasn’t long before I realised that this wasn’t going to work today, because after I landed one small Carp and one Tench I was pestered by small Skimmers and Ronnie’s. I decided to convert the swim to corn over corn with the same rig. Similarly I was pestered by small fish. I decided to close the line down after feeding an enormous pot of corn and meat.

By now the Dude (pictured right landing one of his thirty small Carp) on peg 115 was bagging at 16 metres with 6mm pellet fished shallow – not seeing one bite!! He’s going to bugger is back up by time he’s my age.

I had been feeding both margins with hard 4’s since the start and by now had fed ¼ pint. Into the RH margin with the meat rig and I had one small Tench then nothing. I could see big Perch in the swim and thought at first that they might have been spawning, but Steve Long put me right saying they don’t spawn until February (the weather was appropriate though). I wondered if they were putting off the fish so I started to poke them with my top set. It didn’t make any difference, in fact they seemed to like it. I did foul hook six landing three to 3 lb. I decided that to avoid them (why oh why?) I switched to the other margin and guess what the Perch followed me round. I then realised what was going on, the Perch were swimming around the surface (very much like a snorkeler) and after loose feeding some 4;s the perch would dive down followed after by small fish jumping out the water. The Perch were hunting fish fry! In hind sight I should have tried the whole worm over the top as I lost six foul hiked Perch up to 4lb!!

In between the Perch saga I did land twenty Decent Tench and five Bream all on paste. My Silvers weighed a lot more than I estimated at 54lb. This added to my seven accidental Carp gave me 82lb 5oz.This put me second in the Silvers and fifth overall.

The match was won by Mash (pictured right) fishing peg 132 with 178lb. Mash after failing to catch on the pole with meat switched to the waggler fished to the end margin with meat hook bait fished over loose fed hard 8 pellet.

The Silvers was won by John Green (pictured bottom right with his bag) from peg 78 on Carey with 61lb 13oz of mainly small Skimmers. John fished his normal “to hand” method, fishing over Gimps Gold GB laced with corn and micro pellet with soft pellet hook bait.

I wished I lived closer to this venue as I would love to get fully to grips with it.

Full Result:

1. Mash 178-0-0 peg 132
2. Dan “Dude” Squires 160-10-0 peg 115
3. Terry Bruton 91-15-0 peg 96
4. Pierce Furlong 85-04-0 peg 98
5. Mike Nicholls 82-05-0 peg 116
6. Dave Wride 80-0-0 peg 118

Top Silvers:

1. John Green 61-13-0 peg 78
2. Mike Nicholls 54-0-0 peg 116
3. Terry Bruton 48-06-0 peg 96