Friday 18 November 2016

Viaduct Costcutter, Thursday 17th November 2016

The weather was promising us a soaking today and it was certainly wet loading up the van and driving down, but the rain had stopped by the time I got to Viaduct.  19 fishing today, a reasonable turnout given the forecast, I was second into the draw tin and wasn't exactly jumping for joy when I plucked out 129.  Having drawn it a few Sundays ago and watched 114 catch all day, I was hoping it wasn't a case of groundhog day.

I had brought meat and corn to fish for carp and had some caster and dead maggot in case I drew a decent silvers peg, I decided to fish for carp, as there were plenty of silvers anglers in attendance and on better silvers pegs.  I set up a lead rod, a waggler and 3 topkits, one for up to the spit, another for open water for meat and a rig for dead maggot/caster at 14m.

On the all-in I had a gentle breeze pushing in at me, it was pushing all of the floating leaves in towards me, making things tricky.  I did feed to GB and caster at 14m as Clint had been pestered with carp on 128 during Sundays silver match.  Had a couple of chucks around the peg with bread, but not so much as a liner. After 20 minutes I picked up the waggler and chucked towards 113, after a couple of minutes, the float disappeared and I was into a good fish. After a spirited fight, I netted a double figure fish, not a bad start, next cast I had nothing, by now the wind was swinging round and pushing down the lake.

3rd cast and another carp netted, smaller this time, 4lb or so, I was now thinking it would be a good day, but apart from a missed bite, that was the end of the action for a while, I then had a couple of decent skimmers on the wag and corn. I had fed a few cubes of meat out to the aerator, I had caught on the wag casting to the aerator last time I drew here, today, the only bite was a 1lb+ perch on meat.

131 was drawn, but the angler declined to fish it, his choice but I don't think it helped me, as there were fish showing between 131 and 132, they appeared to move up into all the space, so being the only peg between the spit and the end wasn't such an advantage.

At one point the wind and rain got up, it blew so hard that I half considered putting my pole away, but it didn't last too long and the rain held off for the rest of the match. With half an hour to go I knew I was too far behind to catch up with carp, so out of sheer boredom, I took the 0.12 hooklength (with a 16 hook) off the pole rig and replaced it with a 0.10 and a 18, fishing at 14m I had a few handsize skimmers, but was getting indications and liners from them.  I ended up with 9lb odd of silvers and just over 12lb won the silvers, I am pretty convinced had I fished for them for the whole match I would have bettered that (and had a more enjoyable day).

I didn't get the full results sheet, but this is as reported on Viaduct FB.

Overall
1. Adrian Jeffery - 81lb 11oz - peg 123
2. Peter Bailey - 55lb 4oz - peg 110
3. Chris Rolfe - 51lb 8oz - peg 74
4. Brian Chivers - 48lb 14oz - peg 125

Silvers
1. Mike Jones - 12lb 5oz - peg 127
2. Andy Guard - 12lb 3oz - peg 119

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