Viaduct Silvers All Winners Final, Sat 22nd Oct 20111

I was pleased to qualify for this All Winners Final and was looking forward to a decent days fishing, I know that my commercial carp fishing skills need honing (I'm also a master of understatement) but I'm reasonably confident that I can catch a few silvers if they are there.

The draw saw me sat on 116, with (Cursing) Chris Davies on 115 and Garbolino backed silvers ace and caravan rental specialist, Bob Gullick on 118, with 117 not in. Peg 119 saw genial host and all round piss taker of Avon Angling, Tony Rixon wishing he'd drawn it a couple of Saturdays ago.....

I had plenty of caster, worm & maggot, I even had some devils spawn and a tin of corn. I guessed it would all be to no avail, as I was surely getting a lesson in silver bashing from Bob Gullick, but I remained optimistic. That was sadly misguided as the match panned out.

I set up an insert waggler, on the trusty Normark Microlight, this had a 0.10 hooklength and a 20 hook, 4 pole rigs, a jolly with a 0.008 hooklength and a 20 gamma black hook to fish top four to hand, a KC carpa chimp with a 0.12 hooklength and a 20 hook and a Sensas pencil with 0.10 and a 20.

The rest of it is pretty irrelevant, as I fed some groundbait at 16m and 11m, fed caster at 6m and 2m, as well as in the margins and that was the signal for the carp to come in, at one stage I didn't have a hooklength on any of the rigs or waggler, all gone on carp.....

I stuck it out, joining in the swearing with Cursing Chris, who also suffered with the hungry water pigs, my persistence gaining me 9.07 of silvers, in amongst hooking well over 100lb of carp. I didn't get my silvers lesson from Bob, infact he took a very minor lesson from me, as I took the next peg glory by 4oz.

It was a shame the skimmers didn't feed on Campbell, but then again neither did the tench or perch, it was entertaining seeing so many carp hooked (and landed), especially towards the end when Trigger and Anton on the opposite bank were catching a carp a chuck on worm and having a countdown competition - they both cupped in worm, with worm on the hook and the longest count either of them got to was 54 secs before a greedy water pig grabbed ½ a dendra.

Back to the serious stuff, Nicky Collier trousered the seven hundred and fifty quid, with the top three weights coming from Cary.

1) Nicky Collier 34.07 peg 94
2) Andy Power 28.13 peg100
3) Gary O'Shea 28.04 peg103
4) Vince Brown 27.03 peg 130
5) Matt Tomes 26.15 peg 123
6) S Hutter 26.12 peg 97