Sunday 26/02/2012 - Viaduct Teams of Five Winter League - Round Four - All Lakes.

Nice to have Gary Etheridge back fishing the Viaduct League. Apparently Gary has saved up his winnings from Ivy House and purchase a “newer” Boss Box (Gary is pictured lower right showing off his bespoked “nine” draw box). Gary said it took a lot of hard work to convert the double draw to two singles, also note the two brackets on the front to attach his pinkie bait box.

Tom Mangnall came back with the team draw – it couldn’t have been worse. Bela on peg 81, Anton peg 75, Tom peg 10 and Fabio peg 1. I had the best draw peg by far - 115.

Peg 115 is a good draw but I was apprehensive and more importantly indecisive. Travelling down with Bela we discussed how we might fish and I was focussed on fishing the waggler - maggot over caster as this is a catch all method. However, Anton talked me into fishing meat, either on the waggler and the lead. Phil Cardwell’s thinking was similar. So with two wagglers set up, the straight lead and the pole to be fished at 11.5 metres (peg 115 is a “pier” peg so I was really fishing 14.5 metres compared with neighbouring Anglers – makes a change). Persuaded to fish the straight lead for the first half hour resulted in one 2lb Carp on the meat, however, their were enough liners to keep me fishing the lead for 45 minutes. Nick Collins was doing well landing and losing foul hooked Carp, one a bung on peg 127. So time to try the meat on the waggler with meat again, which I started to “pinging” a few pieces of meat over and had two foul Carp come off, one breaking me. I did have one in the mouth before the swim stopped responding – was it the feed? So I stopped feeding switching to the pole with double caster where I had fed half a pot of Caster and some dryish GB – nothing not even a small Ronnie. I kept persevering with the meat on both the lead and waggler fishing it up and down in the water. With only a few liners to show and with an hour to go I decided to switch to me original plan and fish triple maggot over caster which resulted in three quick decent Carp and a few missed bites – all on the drop – bugger got it wrong through my indecision.  I couldn’t believe I didn’t have one Silver fish. My five Carp weighed in at 27lb 15oz for 12 team points out of 19. With me laying 4th overall individual in the League before the start this result wasn’t what I wanted and it was all down to me not fishing well enough

With TM blanking and as expected the team could only manage 16th overall, demoting the team to a lowly 10th overall, with little, to no chance of a team framing position.

I must mention John Dewsbury fishing on next peg 116 weighing in a remarkable 53lb 8oz, as he caught them all on the pole with meat hook bait fishing either in his RH margin or to his right at 14.5 metres - well done matey.

The match was won by Andy Power (pictured right with part of his catch of nine Carp to 18lb) with 109lb 1oz. Andy caught on the waggler fished at 25 metres past the spit using meat fished 18 inches off bottom. I don’t know anyone who would have fancied his peg to win today – including Andy.

The Silvers was won by Richard Ahearn (pictured right) with 23lb 6oz from Spring Lake peg 18. Richard caught on and off on the pole at 14.5 metres using red maggot over neat GB. Richard fed 2 Kgs of his mix of GB throughout.

Full Result:

1. Andy Power 109-01-0 peg 80
2. Chris Sandford 72-08-0 peg 119
3. Nicky Collins 62-08-0 peg 127
4. John Dewsbury 53-08-0 peg 116
5. Tom Thick 52-08-0 peg 128
6. Tim Pallant 51-01-0 peg 66

Top Silvers:

1. Richard Ahearn 23-06-0 peg 18
2. Mark Harper  20-09-0 peg
3. Wayne Buckingham 15-10-0 peg
4. John Bradford 13-14-0 peg

Top Teams on the Day:

1. Thatcher’s Youth 80 Points
2. Moaning Maggots 77
3. Amigos 65
4. Maver Veals Red 59
5. Somerset Angling 57
6. Jinx 55

16. Silverfox TM 29

Top Teams Overall:

1. Thatcher’s Youth 265
2. Moaning Maggots 242
3. Somerset Angling 239
4. Amigos 227
5. Viaduct Select 220
6. Toss Pots 216

10. Silverfox TM 195