Viaduct Spring League, Round Three, Sunday 24th May 2015

I should have known that today was all going to go wrong after the week I've had.  Last Saturday driving to Viaduct, the van started to make a noise, I suspected a charge air hose, but the turbo and hoses are tight between the back of the engine and the bulkhead.  I put it into the local diesel specialists, as it needed a ramp to sort it, I am still in shock from when they rang, "it's not the charge air hose, it's the turbo, that'll be the best part of grand" including the bloody VAT - what value is there in that for me...... 

So without a van, Tony Rixon kindly picked me up and I squeezed in with him and Fabio. we were going to try The Brewers Fayre in Glastonbury for breakfast, the second time in a week my wallet has been hammered!!  £8.75 for breakfast, I reckon that's the first and last visit there.

Now onto the match and there is little of consequence to write about, I drew 135, which is a feast or famine peg, after Ben had 220lb off it last week I was hopeful of catching a few, but when I got to the peg, my hopes faded pretty rapidly.  The pipe was running water into the RH side of  peg 136, I believe this comes in at about 11deg, so cooling the area. There was a lot of debris and detritus floating about on the surface and an unpleasant looking green scum lining the margins. (Is that enough excuses now....). 

I felt there would be little point in getting either a lead rod or waggler rod out of the bag, so 4 topkits, a meat rig for 6 sections, a pellet rig for 14m and two margin rigs, one with a banded hooklength and one without.  In my experience, when this peg does well, it's the margins that do the damage, so that was my main line of attack, but I started on the meat and had a fish after 10 minutes, after that came the start of the days major frustration, tiny roach and skimmers whittling down 8mm and even 11mm pellets, meat, tugging at double worm and holding 7 maggots and the bulk shot off the bottom.  I would go as far to say, that this was the worst I have ever experienced this at Viaduct and whilst it seems like an easy cop out, I honestly believe it was due to the lack of bigger fish in the peg to push them out.

I fed groundbait into the LH margin and had a perch and two rudd from there, no sign of a carp, the RH margin produced six carp to 8mm pellet over the full duration of the match, I had two fish on pellet at 14m and two fish on meat at 6 sections, the shallow water can be where they want to be some days, but not it would appear, today.  I reckon I had 65lb by the end and with the next lowest weight in the section being 80lb, I didn't trouble the scales, as it wouldn't affect either my or anyone elses league position.  No results, you'll find them on Tony's blog.