Viaduct Cost Cutter, Thursday 30th May 2013

In the car park I realised I'd parked next to a couple of coffin dodger escapee's from Huntstete, Chris Rolfe and Mike Jones, it was like a cross from one of those old vaudeville comedy duo's and an old married couple.  Mike brings along a nice line in hessian handbags, decorated with ladybirds, is this what we have to look forward to as old age creeps up?

After reading one of my old blog entries, they had taken the trip up to Matchbox and spent a few hours there and Mike was proudly showing off his new S Class, complete with wheel/trolley kit. It will look out of place on the new bivvy pegs at Huntstrete........  How ridiculous is that idea, the carp fishermen are the reason I haven't renewed my Bathampton tab for the last couple of years.

Anyway, back to todays match, I had gone with the intention of fishing for carp, so 8mm pellets and 10mm meat were the mainstays of the bait bag, along with some betaine groundbait to make paste.  I wasn't too chuffed when peg 90 revealed itself and less so when I saw the wind was blowing off my back and into the opposite corner, making 94 a much more attractive prospect.

I set up a shallow wag, a full depth wag, a lead rod, and four topkits one for banded pellet, one for meat at 5m, a paste rig and a margin rig. The margin and paste rigs remained motionless when tried, so thats all about them. I had, at the last minute, nicked the last few slices of white bread from home  - not that I eat the horrible stuff -  and stuck it in the bait bag, I started with this on the lead and had two 9lbers in the first 25 minutes, but with no liners or other bites after an hour, that went up the bank where it belongs.

Out on the full depth waggler and a couple of missed bites before connecting with a rocket powered entity, that took off and must have been 30 yards away when I tried to turn it and the 6lb sensor reel line parted with a sickening crack, right on the bail arm roller - its a pretty new reel and an examination of the roller showed no sharp or damaged areas.  So re-tackled up,  another bite and a good fish fairly hooked, I played it for ages and it managed to pick up a sunken branch from the margin, which promptly slid down the line and disgorged the hook.

Shortly after a 2lb skimmer fell to the waggler before all indications on that line stopped, so a switch to the meat line saw the float twitching like an epileptic with St Vitus dance and the meat being taken off the hook.  Finally a couple of skimmers fell to this, but it was a lot of effort for little return.

There seemed to be more skimmers than carp in the peg, so I rummaged through my gear and found a pint and a half of 6mm pellets, putting these on and loose feeding them saw a decent run of simmers and bream come to the net, I was now cursing not bringing groundbait, worms etc.  At 15.25 I hooked and landed another carp, this slowed down the skimmer action, with only a couple more before hooking another carp on the last put in.  The scales gave me 36.07 for the four carp and 28.11 of bream/skimmers.  This was enough to take 2nd silvers on the lake and a pick up, welcome, but totally unintended.  Top silvers on the day was a creditable 60.01 from Craig 'Trigger' Edmunds, taken on 6mm hard pellet.

1) Dick Bull 159.13 peg 114
2) Lewis Greenwood- King 137.12 peg 126
3) Chris Rolfe 131.04 peg 118
4) Tony Whittcomb 124.05 peg 129
5) Mr Unreadable 104.09 peg 94
6) K Guppy 103.15 peg 98

Silvers

1) Craig Edmunds 66.01 peg 77
2) John Bradford 29.12 peg 135
3) Chris Fox 28.11 peg 90