Viaduct Winter League R4, Sunday 1st March 2015

Firstly get well soon Mike Nicholls.

My turn on Lodge lake today, I had decided to fish a positve line for skimmers unless I drew a corner flyer, as expected the corner flyer didn't materialise, the team draw was the same as the first round, where we came rock bottom. That put Mike Walker on 118, stand-in Calum Craig on 85, myself on 56, Paul Faiers on 24 and Glenn Calvert on 9.

With so much time to set up I put up two waggler rods, one with a 4AAA straight waggler and a light one with an insert, the latter not seeing much action as it was very difficult to see.  4 topkits, two with wire stemmed floats, the same set up and hooks, 18 6313 on 0.10, one 0.2 float and the other 0.4, a MW diamond with a double bulk, in case the wind became tricky, this with a 18 on 0.12, final topkit was set up to try and coax a fish or two from the margins.

On the all in I cupped in 4 large balls of groundbait at 14m and then started on the waggler and corn, this proved a biteless exercise and a switch to meat was no more productive, after half an hour I dropped in over the groundbait line and started getting bites straight away, roach and a couple of skimmers, before the bites slowed up, this led to a couple of bigger skimmers, before the bites tailed right off on the hour mark.

I wasn't completely sure about topping up the groundbait, but I did and the fish came straight back over it and this was the pattern for the rest of the match, feed, get a few bites, bites tail off, feed again bites pick up.  I had started on the 0.2 rig, but switched to the 0.4 and it seemed better, it wasn't frantic, but it was enough to keep me interested.

I had kept feeding some corn on the waggler line and about 2o'clock had a look over it, the float was dragging through, so I put 6" of line of the bottom and immediately hooked a decent fish, it was hooked fair and square in the tail and gave me a tough battle on the light waggler gear, but I finally managed to net it.  Next cast I had another bite and the line snapped just above the float, how frustrating, to land a 12lb fish foul hooked and then snap off on one just after.

I dropped back in on the groundbait line and the float buried, another decent skimmer and then a couple of roach.  Towards the end the wind got up and it hammered down with rain, I switched to the double bulk rig and a text book lift bite gave me my final skimmer.

My skimmers went 16lb and a 12lb carp for 28lb, which was 5th on the lake and was enough to take the section win, the 16lb of silvers was just out of the money, so maybe if I hadn't fished for carp I might have framed into the silvers, but the carp gave me good points and an envelope.  5th place for the team, with three of us picking up coin, a big turnaround from the result we had on these pegs in R1.

Joint winners, Andy Power and Steve Long, 107lb from 116 & 73, Calum was 3rd from 85, Fabio 4th with about 80lb and Mike Walker with 70lb or so from 118.