Viaduct Open, Easter Monday, 25th April 2011

Cary & Lodge lakes were in for todays Bank Holiday match, with 36 fishing. There was a fair bit of spawning activity on Cary and plenty of basking fish in Lodge. I'd gone with my usual positive approach, hard pellet, paste and meat being the only baits in my bag. A new area of the lake for me today, peg 105.

Inviting looking margins had me setting up a paste & meat rig, the paste rig direct on 0.19 to a 12 Mustad paste hook and the meat rig was a MW margin on 0.19 to 0.17 with a 14 TXR7 hook. I also set up two wagglers - not a touch on either, a lead rod which also saw no action. For open water I set up a paste rig, a rig to fish banded pellet at depth and another for shallow, lastly a rig to fish meat at 6m.

The open water rigs and rods may as well have stayed at home, nothing to show for any of them, apart from a snapped hooklength on the 6m meat rig - 0.15 is not strong enough for Cary fish.

I started by cupping in some dampend pellets into the LH margin, then had 15 minns on the shallow waggler to let it settle, not a touch on the waggler, so into the margin and two lumps in the next 3/4 of an hour gave me about 25lb, another fish on paste in the LH margin, before a look down the RH side with meat produced another fish. I swapped between the margins, the 13m paste laine and the 5m meat line in the next hour or so, to no avail, apart from one bite and as mentioned, snapped hooklength on the 6m meat rig.

I was hoping for a decent last 2 hours and whilst I had a tench, a skimmer and a couple more on paste, they didn't go mad, I managed 2 more on meat in the RH margin, then a real lump right at the end on paste, which took 5 or so minutes after the whisle before I could get it to the net. I lost another fish which was a big double, it managed to pick up a sunken branch, I played the fish and the branch for 5 minutes or so, before the line snapped - an expensive branch..... as that would have given me third place at least and may well have pushed second and first.

I did win the lake and therefore the section, my 9 carp went 109.09, with 5.04 of tench and skimmer, making a total of 114.13. Its been a decent week, picking up money in 3 out of 4 matches fished.

1) Terry Bruton 129.14 peg 73
2) Anton Page 128.05 peg 56
3) Alan Oram 122.14 peg 60
4) Chris Fox 114.13 peg 105
5) Paul Blake 107.02 peg 57
6) Ray Hayward 105.00 peg 62

Silvers

1) Ray Hayward 28.08 peg 62
2) Andy Lloyd 21.04 peg 59
3) Martin Preston 15.08 peg 97