Thursday 05/09/2013 - Pleasure Day Out to Viaduct Fishery

During one of our “not regularly enough” Friday night fishing gatherings at the Cherry Tree (I am sure these are mentioned occasionally on “Face Book”) Geoff Francis and I reminisced about one of our fly fishing trips to Viaduct circa 1995, most probably in Spring time . This particular trip I fished Carey Lake and caught a few Rainbows from my favourite “Pretty Bush” swim (pictured right - taken by a box brownie). All caught on a floating line and most probably a Gold Headed Montana. Geoff fished Carey where he had caught a 10lb Rainbow. I soon joined him in his swim and we had an amusing hour losing some big fish in the dense weed.

 

Back to 2013 and later that night after a few pints Geoff said he wanted to get back in to course fishing and asked if I would take him to Viaduct for a pleasure session. I agreed. He later texted me asking if I could advise him on some new tackle including a new Pole. So with the date set and with his new Sensas Pole and Maver seat box (I said I wouldn’t take him if brought his Riva box) we set off at 07:00 for breakfast in Canards Well, where Bela said he would meet us, but got the time wrong and didn’t meet up with him until later - TWOT.

 

All the Lakes were taken except Spring with matches, with the usual Thursday cost cutter on Lodge and Match Lakes. It was going to be pegs 24 and 25 on Spring but with Bela now joining us and wanting to thrash around with a waggler we settled on peg 17, 18 and 19 with Geoff on peg 19 and me in the middle. Bela thrashed around catching a few big skimmers on 8mm banded pellet and a host of foul hooked Carp all small by Lake standards. Geoff started off on banded 6mm over hard 4’s at 7 metres and later put on another section this time introducing some Magic ground bait (purchased in 1990) which really got the hand size Skimmers going. As for me I don’t do pleasure fishing very well and tend to get very fidgety, but I decided to give hard banded pellet a good try as it’s a method I don’t use enough of. After trying various forms of feeding and shotting patterns and a couple of walks around the matches I was back playing with the Ronnie rig and various line diameters. It doesn’t appear to make any difference with my rig if you have 0.06 or 0.14 hook length only that you get the accidental Carp out.

 

Geoff caught around 40 lb of Skimmers to 3lb (pictured right with his catch - complete with hat line) and I was about 10 lb behind him. I think had the water quality been better he would have doubled his weight. Most of the Carp seem to be shoaled up around the aerator with Carp anglers catching them regularly from peg 1 and 2 with fish to 21lb.

 

As tradition has it we stopped in the Railway Tavern on the way home and had a delicious stake sandwich and a well cooling pint.