Wednesday 21 September 2011

Viaduct Open, Wednesday 21st Sept 2011

Back to Viaduct today, with just Campbell lake in, at least I couldn't draw the worst lake........

Nice steady drive down, so I went into Somerton and bought ½ a loaf of bread, just in case, whilst I was there I saw a couple of Chelsea Buns, so bought them as a little treat, they were in fact pretty stale and for most of the day I had the company of the tame goose - she ate the stale buns!!

 I drew 115, I'd brought the  tackle and bait to fish for silvers or carp and the sight of carp moving about in the middle, made my mind up to leave the silvers gear in the bag. Four topkits were set up, a margin rig on 0.20 with a 0.18 hooklength and a Xedion TXR7 hook, exactly the same lines and hook for a 6m rig to fish meat, finally a shallow and depth rig to fish banded pellet on 0.16.


I set up three rods, two wagglers, one at full depth and one shallow, as well as a lead rod - hopefully the lead rod wouldn't see much use. I started with the shallow rig and within 5 mins had elastic streaming from the pole, but just landed a big scale, another lost fouler a couple of minutes later and that seemed to be the end of the action shallow, I tried the waggler at depth, just out past the 14.5m line, but this proved fruitless (and fishless), by now an hour was gone and I was still blanking. There were fish on the 14.5m line, so out with the full depth rig and at least I had a couple of fish in the net by an hour and 10 mins, but then the foulers started. Back out with the shallow rig and apart from a few more foulers, very little to show.

I tied up a 2' hooklength of 0.18, with a 14 Guru QM1 and a quickstop, this went on the lead rod and I opened the bread - two chucks, two 7lb+ fish, thinking I'd sussed it, I was rudely reminded this wasn't a day for sussing anything, as I then lost 3 foulers on the popped up bread. The fish were up in the water, moving about, but seemingly, not feeding ravenously on masse. Back on the shallow rig and I started putting a few decent fish together, but it was a case of catch a couple then wait. It seemed as if they were backing away from the pole.

Heading into the last couple of hours, I had 13 carp and the shallow line appeared to be getting stronger, but it just died and I could see other pegs increasing their catch rates whilst mine was stalling. I had fed a line at 5m with meat & hemp and had a look over this, a couple of fish, then again, it appeared to die, I'd also fed a margin line, this produced one fish and no other bites. Back on the 5m meat line, i hooked a big fish, I'm guessing fouled, that ran, then ran some more and then bottomed out 17H elastic and snapped 0.18.

Back on the shallow rig and another fish, I'd tried upping the feed, decreasing the feed, 8mm & 6mm pellets, all to no avail, its just as if they spooked away from the pole or catch area. Last 10 minutes on the meat line and two more carp taking the total to 22, I knew it wouldn't be enough as whilst my peg seemed to get more 'fussy' as the last couple of hours drew to a close, several others got stronger.

The scales confirmed my observations, my 127.03 putting me one off a pick up for the second match running. Miles Levy won, fishing meat shallow and paste in the margins. Eight ton+ weights on the day, so Campbell once again fished well in the end, even though it wasn't easy pickings.

1) Miles Levy 186.12  Peg 126
2) Lee Werrett 156.1 Peg 129
3) Will Bohne 144.03 Peg 112
4) Chris Fox 127.03 Peg 115
5) Steve Hutter 125.01 Peg 125
6) Dan White 121.07 Peg 114

Silvers

1) Tim Pallant 32.10 Peg 130
2) John Green 22.10 Peg 123



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