Viaduct Spring League R4, Sunday 2nd June 2019

I usually try and get in right at the start of the draw, but decided to hang back to near the end today, so see if it would change my luck, pulling out 109 left me feeling maybe it wasn't one of my better ideas.  It can be a decent section peg and I have won the section from it before, so there was that to go for, as I felt it very unlikely the peg was capable of framing.

Given the last couple of matches the section has been won with 50 odd and 60 odd pounds, I did think that would be achievable.  Short walk, so plenty of time to set up a waggler, a lead, topkits for pellet on the deck, pellet shallow, a meat rig and a soft pellet rig. Finally, two margin rigs, one for the edge off to my left and one for the much shallower edge to the right.

Usual start on Viaduct, meat short, it hasn't paid off this for me, but can throw up an early big fish, not today, two decent skimmers in 15 minutes and that was that. I fished the waggler out to the trees in the water, no bites or indications, although there was an odd fish moving.  First look up the edge with Burts Polony pellets saw a 5lb carp netted, hopeful of a few I persevered for another 20 minutes with no indications.

I switched from 8mm feed pellets on the waggler to 6mm and had a 9lber straight away, then shortly after a 6lber, I was getting odd liners and signs that fish were around, but no more proper bites.  A switch to the long pole and pinging pellets brought 2 more carp, before that line also died off.  Another up the edge on Polony pellets, but it was a 2lb stockie, nice to see, but it seemed to be a loner.

The above was in the first 2 hours 15 minutes, with 2 hours to go and no bites since that 2 hour 15 mark, I fed some Tigerfish GB into the edge, a small perch and a 2lb tench took a liking to the double worm, bit nothing else, then out of the blue after rotating round my waggler, long pole and even a lead line further out towards the end of the tree you fish from 74, a 13lber from the edge over the Tigerfish GB, I had 51lb on my clicker and about 5lb silvers.  It was if the fish had moved out of the peg as all indications and signs of fish stopped when the bites dried up, they seemed to want to be further up the lake near the aerator.

 Unfortunately 109 is the last peg to weigh, so I had packed up and wandered up to see the rest of the section weigh in.  Well my initial thoughts of 70lb being a section winning weight were soon proven to be wrong, as the first two in the section had weighed 801, 101 and with more to come, I went back, chucked back and headed home, as I was going to last in section, so it would no effect on anyones  points.  Well done to those who caught and to Gary, winning off 66, which whilst is one of the pegs you'd be happy to draw, its not had great form since the tree was pruned back.

Quite surprised to see me 27th out of 54 after a DNW, still last round and nothing to fish for except pride.