With a warm day forecast, I was hopeful that we'd get a few fish, but by the time I got to Viaduct, it was so bright and sunny that is was obvious the fish were sunning themselves and not feeding. I put a thermometer in the water at the start it registered 20°C which rose to 22°C during the day. The temperature in the sun on the platform, got up to 32°C - a hot day!!
There was a club match on Campbell, so we had Cary and Lodge for the 24 of us that were about to get sun tans.
I pulled peg 85 out of the tin, so I wasn't too disappointed.... I set up two waggler rods, one for full depth and one for shallow, also a lead rod, the full depth waggler got unused and two chucks in the middle of the match was the only action the lead rod saw. I also set up 4 pole rigs, a MW paste float on 0.19 with a 12 Mustad paste hook, a MW slim power for fishing 8mm pellet on 0.17 with a 0.15 hooklength and a 16 B960. I also set up a MW pea for shallow fishing, which I didn't get a touch on. The last rig was a MW margin float on 0.19 to 0.17 with a 14 TXR7 hook.
I fed a 14m line at approx 1 0'clock (just a good place to see the float) and pinged some 8mm pellets out towards the spit - although I couldn't go too close to it, as Tony Rixon was on 81.
I started on the waggler set around 3' and only had one lost foul hooker on that, in the next couple of hours I switched between the waggler and the pole/paste, taking 3 fish on paste & 1 on the waggler, I lost two more foulers on the paste rig. The middle two hours saw me try the lead, but after two chucks without even a liner, that was soon abandoned. I tried the waggler at all depths and apart from two more foulers (both lost) that was it for the rod & line. I managed another 3 or 4 on paste but that line was drying up. In the last two hours I fed some meat at 14m in the margin, not with a great deal of confidence as I have not caught from this margin on the previous two occasions I've drawn 85.
I was using some punched meat (10mm) on the hook and had a carp first put in, I thought I'd cracked it, but no, the margin was as slow and patchy as the rest of the lake (purely due to the bright, virtually windless conditions)although I managed a decent skimmer, a tench and a perch on meat, as well as 3 more carp. I lost a decent fish when the elastic snapped at the pulla bung knot - gutted, it cost me 3rd place and I hate to see a fish going off trailing a rig and elastic. Not sure why it snapped, I'd checked all my elastics last night and there wasn't any signs of perishing or damage. I did try to snag the rig with the lead rod to no avail.
Good day for the tackle dealers as there was a loud crack and the angler on 118 in the club match snapped his pole, he didn't seem best pleased!! Followed a little later by Nicky Ewers joining in the fun, floating several sections (and a half) into the lake. Although as some consolation, Nicky won his section with 95.01 from peg 100
I was unsure what weight I had on the whistle, I thought that most of the fish were around the 10lb mark, with a couple smaller & a couple bigger, the scales showed that the 10lb average was a decent guess, as the carp weight went 122.12 and the 3 silvers 6.09 for a total of 129.05, enough to take a default section win (£45) and 4th in the match.
1) Tony Whittcomb 186.01 peg 73
2) Lewis Greenwood 166.08 peg 76
3) Tom Thick 130.09 peg 87
4) Chris Fox 129.05 peg 85
5) Andy Power 106.07 peg 94
6) Nicky Collier 103.00 peg 90
Silvers
1) John Green 44.02 peg 96
2) Tim Pallant 31.06 peg 70
3) Andy France 27.15 peg 71
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