I'd been looking forward to this one, the first time I have fished this league, just wish I had not been working so much, as I haven't had a chance to get to Viaduct since the last round of the winter league at the beginning of March.
I drew 128 and wasn't at all upset by that, surely I could get some decent points from that peg, how wrong could I be, a frustrating day ensued.......
I slipped back into the bad habit of covering (or trying to) all the options, setting up a waggler to fish at depth and a lead rod. 4 topkits, one for fishing along the spit, a meat rig for 5/6m, a rig to fish banded pellet at 14m and a paste rig. bait table should have been simply meat and pellet, but I did add paste for a line at about 8m towards the willow tree, dead maggot and worm for one area of the spit. With hindsight, meat and pellet should have been the only things on the bait tray.
The wind was blowing up the lake, but I started on the waggler and had a fish about 8lb after 5 minutes, the wind then got stronger and the presentation was poor, so I switched to the pole, I struggled for bites, having one on the pole at 14m, one on paste and a couple of small carp from the spit, but I had to wait a long time for bites and caught more skimmers than carp from the spit.
There was no sign of fish over the meat line, whilst I could see (and hear) the new dream team of Trigger and Bobby G on 114 and 115 emptying it. Tony Rixon on 129 had a few but it slowed up for him, with 4 hours gone I was extremely frustrated, over tired I think and every niggling little issue was making me more and more annoyed - a while back I would have packed up and gone in home in a huff, but I was determined to try and rescue something.
127 started catching a fish a bung on his short meat line with about 90 minutes to go, whilst I managed one bite, a skimmer that leapt out of the water and off the hook, at 16.10 with 50 minutes to go, I reckon I had about 35-40lb in the net, when I saw the first indication of fish on the meat line, I managed to catch steadily for the last 50 minutes, this made up nearly 2/3's of my total weight.
I am well out of touch with the fish on Campbell now, misjudging the weights of them, that and the fact that catching so well in the last 50 minutes compared with the rest of the match, saw met over in a net I though had about 60lb in, so with my net knocked back to 70lb, a lone fish in the other and some silvers, I weighed 90lb and a few ounces for last in section, a day to forget, but some lessons learnt (re-learnt in the case of too many options and baits.....) and I really need to get out on the bank more.
I have just seen that I scraped into last place in the knock-out, so a minor consolation, as I should and could have caught more from the peg, back to Viaduct Thursday, hopefully to put that bad experience behind me.
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