Viaduct Winter League Round 1, Sunday 12th January 2019

This popular league seems to have come round again quickly, last I year I endured all 5 matches without even hooking a carp, so was looking for better this year.  The team has had a change of personnel, Freddie Roberts leaving and Richard A'Herne taking his place, sorry to see Fred go, but a good signing made in Richard.

18 teams this year, so a 90 pegger, good to fish matches this size, but that does inevitably mean that some of the pegs aren't the best, hoping to avoid those, I was first into the draw tub and pulled out, 115, 81, 53, 45 & 7. Not a bad draw on paper, but in the winter 115 can be tough, 81 and 53 can be feast or famine pegs and 7 had Paul Faiers borrowing margin poles to try and get a couple of bites from under the bush. Glenn on 115, myself on 81, Mark Broomsgrove on 53 and Richards debut was on Match lake 45.

I set up a silvers rig, just the one, to catch skimmers hopefully at 14.5m, a rig to dob bread along the spit and down to the monk, another rig to fish the same areas at full depth.  A rig to cover the open water, in case the carp showed up and as there was plenty of time, two wagglers and a lead rod.

Started dobbing bread along the spit, not as much as a tremor on the float bristle, same down by the monk.  I had a search further along the spit with the lead rod and into the open water without as much as a liner, I was starting to feel that there weren't any/many carp in the peg.  So I fed the silvers line with GB/leam and caster, then rested it for a spell on the waggler and corn, again, nothing on that, not any sort of indication.

To get something in the net I went onto the silvers line and started getting hand sized skimmers, not frantic action, but reasonably steadily.  The wind was getting up and there was a lot of tow, I can only assume the affect of the  wind on the main body of the lake was pulling the water out of my peg, as it was fairly sheltered out to 14m, where the ripple started.

I had got off my box to get another topkit, setting up a heavier silvers rig, as the skimmers seemed to want a static bait, when the wind blew  an 8' long branch out of the tree - out of 90 anglers fishing, whose pole would it land on, yep, mine.

So after a bout of Tourettes and being pretty pissed off, I packed what was left of the pole away, I hadn't brought a spare one, so it was rod and line for the rest of the match.  I tried the waggler over the GB, but even laying line on the bottom, the surface tow was pulling the float along and that was nowhere near good enough presentation. I did try a small cage feeder, but that wasn't right either, so I resorted to fishing for a carp for the rest of the match.  I did manage to get one at 14:55 so 35 minutes to go, a angry common that was 14lb I thought, I was hoping another couple might come along, but that was the only tip action of the day.  I did have a few spells on the waggler, but that was totally unproductive and did nothing to give me hope it might produce.

I weighed in  20.01 of which 6.8 was silvers, could have a chance of a silvers pick up until the carbon devastation….  I beat all the pegs on the Cary bank, scoring 11 points, so not brilliant, but not as bad as I thought it would be.  There just didn't seem to be any carp at this end of the lake.

Teamwise we didn't fair well, so its all to do next week!