A choice of two matches today, Landsend or Viaduct. I've been doing a bit of thinking as regards my recent poor run and the need to try and embrace pellet fishing rather than treat it as a necessary evil, with that in mind, I chose Viaduct.
Todays match saw 12 of us on Campbell, so plenty of room and a few fish would surely grace my nets, the traffic was a nightmare and it took an hour and 20 minutes to do what is usually a 50 minute journey. I was about 3rd into the draw tin and I can't say I was too pleased when 130 was staring back at me, the peg hasn't had a lot of form this year. But I was still sure I was going to give it a good go and catch whatever it held.
I had come with the sole intention of fishing for carp, so two baits on the side tray, hard pellet and meat, I set up a rig to fish pellet at 14m, meat at 7m and a margin rig. To compliment this, I set up a full depth waggler and a straight lead. On the all in I started on the waggler out towards the aerator, it took 40 mins to get a fish and no real indication or gut feeling that they were there. Dropping onto the 14m pole line I caught a couple straight away where I had potted in some 6mm pellet at the start, but they were small fish and the bites weren't too quick in coming. I had Paul greenwood on 132 for company and by now he was catching a few on the waggler, up towards 134.
The pole line did offer up a few signs of fish, a few bubbles, not exactly fizzing, the odd swirl and a couple of foul hookers, so into the box and out with a shallow rig, I hadn't set one up as it was flat calm and the colour has dropped out a bit. I tried the shallow rig, just dropping it in, slapping and varying the depth, it didn't produce a single bite. I had fed the margins either side and had a look in them, nothing, I wasn't too surprised I hadn't seen any indication of fish down to 129 or under the tree to my right.
The 7m meat line was also devoid of signs of fish, so I did pick up the lead rod and had one fish on it, but another small one (3lb). With 2 hours gone I was struggling, so back on the 14m line and I managed a couple more fish, lifting and dropping, but the wait for a bite was far too long to compete with the pegs I could see bagging further down the lake.
Finally, with a couple of hours to go, the meat line produced a bubble or two, although the bubbles seemed to becoming slightly short of where I had fed, so I took a section off and dropped in with some meat, kinder potting about half a dozen pieces over the float. In the fifth and sixth hours, my clicker went from 45lb, to 118lb and two tench at the all out, a few better meat fish, but it was a long way behind the pegs further down the lake.
It was an interesting last couple of hours that flew by, as I tried to work out the feeding on the meat line, too little (3 or 4 pieces) and bites were very slow to come, too many (12-15 pieces) and the peg fizzed, the float jigged about and a foul hooker charged off. I had been dropping it in from 4' and that also seemed to encourage the liners, so I found that 6-8 pieces put on top of the float with no splash, produced hitable bites from bigger fish. A small consolation was beating Paul on 132, as the honours were reversed when we drew 131(me) and 132 a couple of months ago.
I was reasonably pleased with my performance, given that the fish were obviously shoaled up further down the lake, I'm sure I could have improved on my performance with the pellet, but not to the extent that would have more than doubled my weight.
Everyone who weighed (except Tim Pallant who fished for silvers), weighed over a ton, so I have gone further down the list than normal, to try and show the location of the fish in the middle area of the lake.
1) Scott Russell 280.15 peg 115
2) Dan White 232.06 peg 114
3) Dave Romain 197.02 peg 128
4) Roy Worth 180.13 peg 116
5) John Green 160.12 peg 112
6) M Skyme 145.15 peg 125
7) Chris Fox 128.02 peg 130
8) Colin (Burner or Barker?) 105.01 peg 126
9) Paul Greenwood 101.01 peg 132
Pegs 110 and 118 DNW
Silvers
1) Tim Pallant 34.10 peg 123
2) Scott Russell 13.13 peg 115
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