Sunday - 16/10/2013 - Viaduct Silvers League - Round Two - Campbell, Carey and Lodge

I had a new driver today The Black Horse Bouncer – Martin Rayet. After a couple of miles I started to smell Toast and Jam, apparently Martin’s choice of ingredients for his e-cigarette – astonishing, what ever next? It was Hobson’s choice for breakfast - Canards Well. However, it was nice to see Nick the Chef back even though the water for the tea was cold, the coffee percolator was broken as was the credit card machine – what a dump.

In to the draw bag and out comes peg 102 on Carey, I wasn’t unhappy as there are worse pegs. However, it DNW'ed the day before in the Silvers final. For company on peg 103 was Robin Guy, Paul Faier's was on peg 100 but couldn’t see him because of the trees. Matt Long needs to get some Lumberjack lessons. It was nice to meet up with Roger Baker again who was behind me on Lodge peg 70 and was on a two week holiday at Viaduct with is Wife.

The water looked clear so didn’t think the Ronnie’s would put in much of an appearance, however, I still set up two Ronnie rigs one short up to the tree on my right and a long one for out in front and a 4x12 Malman F1 float to fish at 10 metres at 1-o-clock. That was it.

I decided not to feed caster in the GB as the Carp love the stuff so fed three ball of GB laced with a few dead reds on the 10 metre lone and one ball on the long Ronnie line and started to loose fed casters down the right under the tree. I started on the long Ronnie line with single dead red and caught small Ronnie’s and Skimmers regularly. In between I tried the short Ronnie rig with single caster and would catch one or two Ronnie’s before it died, probably due to the lack of colour and the bright sunshine which had now shown is face. Back on the long Ronnie rig which I had kept topping up with GB and kept the small fish coming. Robin had fed caster and was getting battered by Carp snapping a top-set in the process. Time to try the 10 metre line with single dead red and had a 2oz Skimmer first try, but that was it completely dead. Time for the banana walk and Bob Gullick owned up to 8lb as was Dan Squires. So back in the saddle and decided to pump up some 4mm expanders and wet down some micro. Before I fed pellet I tried an expander first and caught a small Skimmer. So this made up my mind to feed a smidgeon of micro. With both Ronnie lines dying I spent the remainder of the match on the long line and pellet catching six to the pound Skimmers regularly. The biggest fish today was about 5oz so plenty of bites Hooking only one Carp.

I finished the match with 12lb 3oz for 4 points only beating the anglers each side of me. I think you have two options at the moment you either feed GB laced with caster and have an early battle with lots of Carp with the anticipation of catching big Skimmer late on (Nick Chedzoy) or trying to avoid them catching small fish.

The match was won by Sam Powell (pictured right) with 35lb 5oz from peg 78. Sam caught some decent Roach and Hybrids down his right to the tree using caster on over caster, picking off the odd better Skimmer at 16 metres using expander over GB. Well done matey.

Finally have a thought for Dan Squires who drew peg 100 on the All winners Silvers final watching James Allen catching Skimmers all day on peg 99 for 40lb only to draw peg peg 99 today and watched Bob Gullick catch 30lb on peg 98. How unfair can fishing get at times.

Full Result:

1. Sam Powell 35-05-0 peg 78
2. Bob Gullick 30-0-0 peg 98
3. Glen Calvert 27-06-0 peg 123
4. Dave Burns 24-03-0 peg 73
5. Craig Edmonds 23-08-0 peg 114
6. Dom Sullivan 22-14-0 peg 60

Weigh Sheets: