Viaduct Open, Bank Holiday Monday 27th May 2019

So, back to Viaduct today and try to banish yesterdays embarrassment. I had sorted out my bait and had a selection of pellets, there was a bag of worms and a pint of dead maggots still in the bait bag, I left them in, just in case...

54 fishing today, so Campbell, Cary and Lodge all in, waited and joined the back of the draw queue, just to try and change my luck / routine.  Campbell was my reward, 125, the area had fished hard yesterday, so I had the option of fishing for silvers or carp.

When I got to the peg, it was evident that the guys either side were fishing for carp, mainly on the lead by what they had set up, this swayed me towards the silvers, but did set up the usual lead and waggler rods and a couple of top sets for carp, just in case they had a munch.  The other topkits were two identical Hillbilly floats, new models to me, with Tungsten wire stems, the type that doesn't bend, one with a banded hook and one with plain hook, both 18's on 0.12.

Started short, as this can often throw up a quick carp or decent skimmer, but with no signs in 6 or 7 minutes I binned this line and fed a line at seven joints with plain feed micros, feed No4's in a ball of GB, which was a 50/50 mix of Burt Baits Silvers Sensation and Expander.  I did feed 8mm feed pellets at 25m, to see if the fish would respond and start fizzing.

First put in over the micros/GB with a 4mm Burts soft hooker pellet (sweet F1 flavour) and I hook a carp, about 9lb, it was netted after tussle, the Stroft 0.12 and Guru 18 Kaisen hook doing the business.
After this I did settle into a routine, catching skimmers from 6oz up to 2lb, for the first couple of hours it was best to feed a ball of the GB/pellets and fish it out, gradually the fish backed off and trickling in some pellets without GB brought them back.

I did try worm on the hook, I had a couple on it, but it was nowhere near as effective as the Sweet F1 pellets, I feed some of the GB mix down the edge virtually next to my pallet, over this I had a run of perch, a small tench and a couple of skimmers.  Resting the 7m line seemed to help, as going back over it brought some more skimmers and I did this for the last 90 minutes, taking odd perch and skimmers, as the fishing slowed down.

The scales arrived, I'd tipped back my lonesome carp, couldn't believe I had fished all day with the same 0.12 hooklength, must be a record this time of year.  I thought I might have 40lb and was pleased to see the scales record 49.05 over two weighs, I knew Steve Tucker had a good run of skimmers down the edge on 123 and was relieved to see him weigh a respectable 45lb, so my 49lb won the silvers and qualified for the silvers all winners final.

Well done to Adrian on the win, a tough day for many, hopefully things will start to settle down soon.