Viaduct Silvers League R5, Sunday 1st December 2019

Travelled down to this one with Tony, layered up with more clothing than yesterday, but it turned out there was no need, as the wind was much less cold today.

Having bemoaned my draws so far on this league, it was a shock to see 130 on the card when I opened it,  peg that has produced some decent silvers weights recently.

With loads of time, I set up a 3 square feeder, a waggler and 3 topkits, one for roach/anything at 6m where I'd do a caster line and two rigs for 14m, one a double bulk and one with a bulk and one dropper, all with 0.10 and a 18 F1 hook.

Two lines at 14m, one at 11 o'clock and one at two o'clock, because that's where the light was decent to see the float and the depth was within a couple of inches.  Started by feeding the RH line fairly negatively, with one small ball of GB, without much feed in and the LH line with 2 balls, bit more feed in them.

20 minutes on the caster line and mo bite, that got binned and I went over the negative line and had a couple of small skimmers, then a couple off the positive line, topped up and had a couple of slightly bigger fish, but Ricky on 131 was getting bigger fish, fishing up to his right towards the unoccupied 132.  Topped up again as the bites tailed off, had one more small skimmer and that was it for over an hour, not even a liner.

I did give the feeder and the waggler a go, but only hooked carp on both, there were plenty moving around past the pole line, so it wasn't much of a surprise.

Decided the way to compete (as it was fishing hard from what I could see) was to stick it out on the pole lines, I had another little spell in the middle of catching a few small skimmers and then an hour with none, at 15:10 (twenty minutes from the end) I had a 10 minute spell of getting one a chuck, again small skimmers, nowhere near the size that Ricky was getting, the at 15:20 that was it and no more bites for the rest of the match.

Didn't have a bite on caster all match, dead maggot or dead pinkie being the best bait, I'm sure they just backed off, but following them out was impossible, due to the carp taking the bait first.  Thankfully the carp didn't come in on the pole line, I think I only hooked two all day.  My 12lb odd was enough for I believe 7th overall, 2nd in section, but with Ricky's 20lb winning I did sneak the section money by default, so thanks Ricky....