Back to Viaduct this week for the second round of the winter league, it was my turn on Match lake, which I like, so hopeful of a few bites. The draw would be all important, the team protocol was for each member to draw, but as Fred has the golden arm he was cajoled into dipping his hand into the tin again. There were a couple of unflavoured draws in the tin, but thankfully Fred avoided the worst of them and handed us: Glenn on 127, Fred on 96, Mark on 64, myself on 47 and Paul on 15.
127 wasn't likely to throw up a weight, but Glenn would try and catch some silvers there, Fred knew exactly what to do on 96, Mark recalled my time on 64 last year, I was blanking with 3 minutes to go and then had a carp that salvaged a few points, 47 was more favourable than I first thought, when I found out 46 wasn't in and Paul was hopeful of carp down the edge and skimmers on 15.
As the matches are 5 hours, no need to set up too much kit, but with an island chuck I did set up a lead rod, to start on bread across, a Normark Microlight to fish the waggler, 2lb reel line and a 0.10 hooklength with a 20 F1 hook.
Plumbing up the pole lines, I found the deepest part of the peg was at 11m, going further out saw the bottom slightly sloping up and at 14m it was 6" shallower than 11m. I set three rigs up, one for 11m, two for 14m, one a double bulk rig. The water was fairly clear and I wasn't convinced that the fish would come to 11m.
The all-in was called and I started on the bomb and bread, I tried tight to the island, short, at various places along the island, all to no avail, I was expecting a bite, but didn't have so much as a liner. I switched to the waggler and put a small roach in the net, then a skimmer, another small roach and then a 6oz roach - I thought that I was going to have a busy day catching, but that was the end of the roach, they disappeared and I never had another the rest of the match.
I did have a better skimmer on the waggler, then a smaller one, then the jagged fight of a perch. This was spread out of 40 minutes, the action was far from hectic. Next bite was met with a more solid resistance and initially I thought it was a carp, but the fight soon gave away it was a good perch, the fish took the line above the float through a floating bramble branch, with a clump of weed attached to it. This would not come off the line no matter how hard I tried and in the end I had to try and lift it out of the water to get the fish up to net it. It then became a dead weight and negated the playing action of the rod and the perch bounced the hook out of its mouth, shame it was 2lb+.
Next cast, another decent fish hooked, but it felt fouled and so it was, halfway in and it came off, a large F1 scale still on the hook. This saw the start of an hour or so where bites had dried up, I had a look in the pole lines with pinkies, tried the lead again, all to no avail, I kept pinging a few casters in regularly and went back on the waggler, deciding that I had to try closer to the island.
The downside of this was the volume of tree cuttings or wind fallers in the peg, at one stage I hooked one every cast, I had to drop shorter than I wanted and this did see 2 F1's and another couple of skimmers come to the net, but I needed a carp to bump my weight up and for the second week running I did well to avoid one.....
I knew I'd beaten some, but with Matt Tomes on my left having two carp, I knew he'd beaten me, as with a couple of others who had carp. Also beaten by a couple of the pegs on Spring which were in the section, so my hard won, waggler caught 13.04 was worth 11 points.
Glenn had struggled on Campbell, beating those around him to get 5 points, Fred winkled a couple out for 10 points, Mark had a similar experience to me on 64, a carp in the last 5 minutes giving him 12 points, my 11 and Paul with 13 from peg 15 saw us with a lesser total than last week, but we only dropped a place to 5th and apart from Colmic who are opening up a big lead, its tight and all to fish for over the next 3 rounds.
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