Well, the last day of my fortnight off work, so what better way to spend it than fishing. Charlie Barnes has instigated a knock up on Fridays on Viaduct Match Lake, so with 8 others I dipped into the draw tin and pulled out peg 40. Disappointing, as it isn't a peg I'd run to and with the North Westerly wind, it was going to be tough today. Lots of space as the next anglers were Steve Long on 52 and Terry Nibblet on 42.
The weather (or to be more precise) the wind had me setting up a small groundbait feeder on my favourite skimmer lead rod, a Drennan Matchpro Quiver and a waggler on the trusty MK 1 Normark Microlite. Three top kits, a margin rig on 0.16 and No12 elastic, a Carpa Chimp on 0.14 to 0.10 and a 20 Drennan red carp hook and a MW diamond on 0.16 to 0.14 with a 16 808 for soft pellet.
I optimistically fed a line with micro and softend 4mm pellet at 12m, the wind was making it difficult to present here, a line at 5m with caster and tried in vain to get some caster to the 20m line where I wanted to fish the waggler. I started at 12m and had a few small fish on the devils spawn, carp & skimmers, but then started to get roach - 30 to the pound roach - on it.
A switch to the ground bait feeder, I clipped up and managed to get it landing reasonaly accurately, but the tip didn't move, I tried it a couple of other occasions, all to no avail. Trying the waggler was nearly as fruitless, even with 12" of line and a string of No10's on the bottom, it was still dragging through, the bites were coming to a still bait.
Halfway through I dropped into the margins, left and right alternatively at 8m and had a few fish on corn, a varied selection, a couple of perfect little tench (3 or 4 oz), a couple of 10oz roach & rudd and a few F1's and some small carp. Then a fish whose reactions were considerably quicker than mine took me into the rushes, losing the whole rig. Stepping up to 17H elastic and 0.18 line ensured I didn't lose anymore fish, but the margin line did die off - as did Steve Long's.
I had 3 decent size skimmers from the 5m line and then Les 'Chubhead' Williams walked round, that killed that line. I fed a couple of balls of groundbait/caster on the 12m line and fished the waggler over it, taking a couple more skimmers and with 20 minutes to go, the wind relented and I had a run of skimmers up to the whistle, all on double red maggot.
Shame that the wind had spoiled the last day of my holiday, I'm sure if I had been able to present a bait long on the pole, I would have had a decent weight of skimmers. My silvers went 15.09 & carp 16.04, putting my 31.13 near the bottom of the result sheet. Its frustrating when you see other anglers sheltered by the trees, islands etc. able to fish 14m with ease and not a hint of wind - still thats match fishing.
Tom Thick won, fair play, he looked pretty rough when he got out of Charlies van, after a session in a Bath nightclub - I think the days when I could do that are long gone.... Tom certainly has this pellet fishing sussed, I'm going to have to spend some time and effort into improving my understanding of it.
1) Tom Thick 80.13 peg 44
2) Will Bohne 64.12 peg 50
3) John Green 64.01 peg 45
4) Terry Nibblet 50.10 peg 42
5) Colin Dyer 43.10 peg 49
6) Steve Long 38.14 peg 52
Silvers
1) Dan White 25.10 peg 47
2) Tom Thick 24.10 peg 44
3) Will Bohne 21.03 peg 50
4) Chris Fox 15.09 peg 40
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