Viaduct Open, Saturday 2nd July 2011

I was quite happily making my way to Viaduct, when at just before 10am the phone rang, "where are you, its a 09.30 draw". Why do they have a different time on Wednesdays and Saturdays? To confuse the simple, obviously...... Luckily Paul Greenwood had left a ticket in for me, unluckily it was 125.

I decided to keep things simple and set up a pellet waggler, as there were plenty of fish sunning themselves and cruising round in the sunshine. The water temperature was 24.3°C, no wonder they were so laid back. I also set up 4 topkits, one for paste, one for banded pellet at depth, one shallow and a margin rig for meat. This was a total waste of time, either I'm doing something drastically wrong, or every peg I get is full of tiny roach etc. which continually nibble away at the meat.

The first 20 minutes were spent trying to mug some of the cruising fish, but they weren't having it and they backed off towards the middle after having a pole waved over their heads. Out with the pellet waggler and I had a couple of indications, then a slight ripple got up and I had three fish in quick succession, the ripple went and that was pretty much the end of the waggler line. In the meantime, I was seeing Martin Preston on 123, getting a run of fish on the lead, fishing popped up bread.

I dropped into the 14m line I'd been feeding, with the paste rig and soon had a flying skimmer, next fish was a big lump well into double figures. From then on it got hard, the margin only produced 1-2oz roach on meat, so that was abandoned. I stuck at the 14m line with paste and alternating that with 8mm banded pellet, this produced a couple more skimmers. There were plenty of skimmers blowing over the feed, so with 2 and a bit hours to go I decided to set up a skimmer rig. This was dropped in and I immediately started to catch carp on the expander, another double figure fish was landed.

I reverted back to small balls of paste, without feeding, this stopped attracting carp and had a few more skimmers, with hindsight I should have fished for them all day, as I was so far adrift on the carp. I also had 2 tench on the paste, the first tench I've caught in open water at Viaduct. My 7 carp went 48.02 and the skimmers 24.00 for 72.02.

Peg 132 kept up its good form as it produced 209.10 to win

1) Roland (Lucas?) 209.10 peg 132
2) Lewis Greenwood 162.01 peg 112
3) Martin Preston 145.10 peg 123
4) Craig Edmunds 128.08 peg 110
5) Andy Wilkinson 127.10 peg 119
6) Tim Ford 100.11 peg 129

Silvers

1) Craig Edmunds 66.08
2) Dan Squire 52.02
3) Andy Wilkinson 39.07