Viaduct Spring League Round Three, Sunday 21st May 2017

With the promise of a dry day from the weathermen, I was looking forward to this, once again, same as virtually everyone else in the draw queue, I was hoping for a flier on Campbell.  I needed a decent result today, only a section win would do.  Into the tin and out comes 100 on Cary, not what I would have chosen, but I thought it might be a reasonable section peg.

The wind was OK for fishing the waggler, so that was straight out of the bag, as I like fishing it on this lake, also a lead rod in case I had to......   Four topkits completed the set up, one for down the edge to the vacant pallet of 101, two for meat, one a standard bulk and droppers, the other a homemade wire stemmed float that takes 3x11, to fish the meat on a very slow fall.  Finally a rig to fish pellet at 14m.

A start on the short line was a very slow starter, with just 2 skimmers in the first 20 minutes, a switch to the waggler was concerning, as I didn't have as much as a liner, which is unusual for this lake. It was quiet either side and I could see Des sat on 80, looking enthralled at being sat on the lead.....  He did get an early fish, I reluctantly picked up the lead rod and threaded two 8mm meat cubes onto the hair.  This was enthralling, so I got my radio out to listen to the football and found the battery was flat.... great!!

About 10 minutes of a motionless tip is all I can stand, so picked it up to wind in and there was a fish on, probably the smallest carp in Cary, about 4lb, it was fairly hooked in the mouth, so it was either just sat there with the bait in its mouth, or I wound it in just as it picked the bait up.  Enough lead chucking, so another look on the meat and a skimmer was all I had to show for it.  Out onto the 14m line and nothing on pellet and only missed bites and small skimmers on meat.

Trying to make something happen, I upped the 8mm pellet feed and went back on the waggler, this brought 4 fish over the next 3 or so hours, before I dropped into the margin.  I had several looks in the margin and never had a bite there, not even on maggot, which is pretty unusual.  The light meat rig was a waste of time and resulted in either a missed bite or little skimmer before the meat got to the bottom.

With 35 minutes to go I put 1/3 of a pot of meat and a few pellets in on the short line and almost immediately had a carp blowing over it.  It took a few minutes to get a bite and after a bit of a tussle, a 16.10 mirror was safely netted.  That was the last fish and that's my series over, I put 63.03 on the scales for 4th in section, pegs 105 and 109 taking first and second in section by some margin.

The weigh sheet shows I was in a mini section with the lowest weights on the lake, struggling to think where I could have got enough to win the section from, so its just looking for all out match winning glory in the next two rounds!!