Sunday 07/10/2012 - Viaduct Silvers League - Round Two - Campbell, Carey and Lodge Lakes

From rags to riches (http://silverfoxangling.blogspot.co.uk/2009/06/sunday-28062009-avon-angling-open.html) and from second best man to Best Man (Matey Darren Gillman married the beautiful Corrina on 29/09/2012):

Bela arrived dead on time however, he looked a bite jaded – ask him! After our usual grumbling about our ache’s and pains it was into Woody’s for breakfast. Use it or lose it.

I noticed last match that everyone that waited until last drew on Lodge Lake, which I wanted to avoid, favouring Carey. So I went in middle queue and pulled peg 101 – happy with this until I found that I had Bob Gullick on peg 99 and even worse Tony Rixon on peg 100 - the current form Skimmer peg and Matt Tomes on peg 103 – all good Silver anglers in good pegs and all in my section, so it was going to be tough for the poor Pensioner.

Kevin Moulton came by my peg and told me he had 16lb from the peg last match, not being able to catch long, catching some late Skimmers down the edge, whilst peg 100 weighed 40lb. My peg use to have an over hanging tree until with the use of Matt Tomes saw and the brute force of An-Ton Page it was cleared enough for my Ronnie rig – thanks guys.

I set up just the two rigs – 4x14 Jolly to be fished long at 11.5 metres into the white water (you can’t beat a black top float for viability) for the Skimmers and the Ronnie Rig. Both had 0.1 hook lengths, only because it’s much easier to loose the Carp! I much prefer 0.14 for the Silvers. On the whistle I fed the long line with two balls of my neat Skimmer mix GB and started sparingly loose feeding casters in my LH margin. Whilst I waited for the GB to settle I started on the Ronnie rig and caught a few 2oz specimens before it went quite. I must say I was a bit disappointed that the Ronnie’s didn’t appear to be chasing the feed. So it was out on the Skimmer line and after trying all the usual baits I could not catch, whilst Tony on the next peg was catching Skimmers regularly. I tried kinder potting CW&C which only resulted in encouraging the Carp to break my hook lengths. I switched to feeding a ball of GB laced with casters with caster on the hook and did catch two Skimmers, one big and one small before it died again. So a pattern formed it was feed a ball of GB (I dare not feed any more because of the active Carp) then on to the Ronnie’s, but this time out in front one foot off bottom. I kept a few Ronnie and small Hybrids coming, and then it was out after the Skimmer again catching another two. However, after losing five hook lengths to Carp I gave up the long line to concentrate of the Ronnie’s. With 1 ½ hours to go I switched back in to the RH margin with the Ronnie rig, but this time with my favoured 0.14 hook length which resulted in a tremendous run of Bream and Hybrids to 3lb adding about 30lb to my catch – I didn’t want the match to finish – but it did, but not before I had “lent” Tony some of my GB because he had run out in which time he added another five Skimmers to his catch – a mistake – not - as he would have lent me some of his rubbish GB if I had run out – but being beaten with your own GB - bugger.

Because my catch consisted of all sorts I wasn’t sure what I had caught. Tony was certain that Bob Gullick had won our section, with himself second and Matt Tomes just a head of me. Luckily Tony got it all wrong again. Tony won the section with 48lb 10oz and I was amazed (again) that I ran him so close with 46lb. A memorable day especially as I fed 1.1 pint of casters and took six pints of freebies home with me!!

The match was own by Tony Rixon (pictured right with his catch). Tony caught on … see his blog.

Runner up was me (pictured right with the winner).

Full Result:

1.      Tony Rixon 48-10-0 peg 100

2.      Mike Nicholls 46-00-0 peg 101

3.      An-ton Page 43-04-0 peg 70

4.      Bob Gullick 36-14-0 peg 99

5.      Steve Kedge 36-05-0 peg 121

6.     Andy Neal 35-10-0 peg 77

7.      Lee Werrett 34-02-0 peg 71
8.      John Green 32-0-0 peg 128
9.      Tim Pallant 31-09-0 peg 94
10. Joe Mc Mahon 31-04-0 peg 78