Viaduct Teams of Five Sunday 16th January 2011

First team match of the year, first visit to Viaduct in 2011, which on the whole, was good to me last year, especially in my first full season fishing it.

Arrived at the Globe for the buffet style, help youself brekkie, not bad, so I was all set for a decent day, when back comes my draw, peg 8 on Spring, another bloody corner, which aren't my favourite pegs in winter. With peg 7 in as well, that left little water to fish, except a 14m line for silvers and the margin for carp (which I had no confidence would show) or a big perch or two.

At the all in I fed some caster at the end of the boards to the RH side and a few dead reds at 14.5m along the margin. At various times throughout the match I tried these lines, with maggot, caster, corn, meat & worm as hookbait, all to no avail, not so much as a twitch on the float.

Starting at 14.5m, with some groundbait and dead reds, I had 3 skimmers in 3 put ins - great, a day on the skimmers, but no they had other ideas and they were the only three I caught all day. The wind was making it difficult to fish the 14.5m line, so I started a line at 9m. This produced a 8oz perch to caster first put in and then a ruffe and a couple of very small rudd.

Once again it was a struggle to get bites, not just for me, peg 7 was struggling, so I had the chance to avoid being last in the section! I started to loose feed caster over the 9m line and shortly after had a tench that saved me from last in section, my hard won 4.08, just beating the couple of decent perch from peg 7 by 5oz.

I can't fish all the matches, but I'm looking forward to some warmer weather and a peg with some water to work at in the next one I fish. Sadly the rest of the team struggled as well and to make the day worse, I lost a screw on foot from my Matchbox walking back to the van, retracing my steps failed to find it. Although that wasn't as bad as Lance (Tucker) who managed to lock his car keys in his car, with no spare.


1. Jason Radford 82-0-0 peg 3
2. John Gray 78-02-0 peg 132
3. Will Bohnie 54-0-0 peg 113
4. John Howell 45-10-0 peg 53
5. Chris Davis 43-12-0 peg 40
6. Alan Oram 35-03-0 peg 110

1. Chris Davis 24-04-0 peg 40
2. Tony Rixon 16-05-0 peg 88
3. Jamie Parkhouse 14-04-0 peg 39
4. Nick Collins 14-02-0 peg 102
5. Steve Kedge 13-09-0 peg 52