Viaduct Costcutter. 22nd July 2010

My Viaduct roll came to an abrupt end in this match, I drew 96, with Alan Oram on 97, so I hoped to pick his brains a bit. The Thursday learning curve and experimentation just ended with me puzzled - not the idea at all.

I started on the pellet waggler, as did Alan, I was pretty quickly convinced it was a non starter, Alan quickly switched to the lead, I dropped in on my pole line and had a 10lb fish straight away on the paste rig.

I'd set up a lead rod, pellet waggler and a couple of pole rigs, one paste rig and a shallow rig, another to try the RH margin.

Theres no point in writing loads of waffle, I never had a bite on the lead, nor the waggler, either shallow or at depth. My peg was fizzing like mad on the 12m line and I did set up another rig to if I could catch on soft pellet, I could and it was skimmers that were fizzing. I wasn't really geared up or in the frame of mind to fish for skimmers, I reckon one the silvers experts would have done a good weight of them from this peg, but I wanted to catch carp.

On 97 Alan took a couple of fish on the lead, then switched to the pole and caught regularly, whilst I couldn't get a bite on paste, a battering looked likely snfd so it turned out. With 20 minutes to go, my paste line came alive and I had a fish every put in, an hour or so too late.....

I knew I couldn't get near the framers, so tipped back my tench and skimmers which went about 8lb and my carp which were close to 50lb - too little, too late.
I haven't yet worked out why Alan caught and I didn't, but the lake was patchy, with a fair few others struggling. Although not Josh Garrett on 81, he weighed 203.02 to win, but was lucky to keep one of his rods - should you leave them in whilst peeing....!!! (Thanks to Alan Oram for pointing the mad scamble from pee positon to rod rescue....)

If you took the top three results away, it would have been a close match, the fish seemed shoaled up and reluctant to move.


1) Josh Garrett 203.02 peg 80
2) Alan Oram 126.13 peg 97
3) Kevin Newman 113.11 peg 88
4) L Ware 77.12 peg 100
5) B Guvers 63.14 peg 74
6) Martin Lenaghan 62.03 peg 105

Silvers

1) Steve Long 49.02 peg 78
2) Andy Power 27.13 peg 94
3) Charlie Barnes 14.09 peg 102