Viaduct Winter League, Round Three, Sunday 14th February

Really good drive down to the fishery today, only two Sunday dawdler's and they were on straight stretches where I could pass and stay stress free!!

It was Freddo's turn to pluck the team an quintet of flyers from Viaduct's trusty coffee tin, not sure he quite managed it, but we'll blame the frosty weather earlier in the week and the cold easterly wind for the carp being holed up and not venturing out for a munch.

Fred managed to put Mike on 126, Paul on 94, Glenn on 62, himself on 46 and me on 15, so a mixed bag for the team. I had really fancied an island chuck, but it wasn't to be and whilst 15 has a reasonably deep edge down to a tree in the water, the water clarity didn't give me too much hope that that would yield much.

Peg 15 looking towards the genial Adrian Jeffery, who spent some time fishing in a tree.........

The straight ahead view of 15

With the guys on the river Cary bank being quite close, there isn't much of a lead chuck on this peg, so I only set up one lead rod and it only wetted the the line for the first 5 or 6 minutes, so no more about that.  My neighbour Jason Radford on peg 16 had a coveted island chuck and only set up a lead rod, he has more confidence in it than I do......

I also set up a couple of waggler rods, but once the all-in was called, the wind got up and as well as causing several outbreaks of Tourettes, it was pushing the waggler through, with no real tow to hold it still.

So that left the pole, 4 rigs set up, a more in hope than expectation, margin rig, a double bulk rig, with 6" of line on the bottom because of the wind, a .2 rig to fish through the water and a .3 rig on 0.20 and a 0.18 hooklength, just in case the carp showed up towards the end.

Bait tray consisted of casters, dead maggots and pinkies, live maggots, corn and meat, I did have some bread, but given the limited lead chuck, the ducks enjoyed that at the end of the match.  I haven't caught much over groundbait the last couple of matches, but did mix some up and fed a line at about 1 o'clock. The other line at 11 o'clock I fed with caster, expecting to catch on it, as Jason was fishing a long chuck to the island, leaving that water to me.

Fishing has a habit of upending your thinking and today it didn't fail, the caster line was pretty much dead and the GB line started producing skimmers from 6oz to 1lb.  I had to regularly top the GB to keep catching and I did get one or two fish over the caster line, but on maggot, I only had one fish on caster all day.

The middle of the match went a bit quiet, I was pretty convinced the fish were coming up off the bottom as I had a couple of bites on the drop, but the wind made it impossible to fish the light rig through the water, so I had a try on the waggler, managing one decent skimmer on it, before going back to the double bulk rig which produced virtually all of my fish.

I did introduce a few bits of 6mm meat over the caster line, hoping for a carp or the bigger bream that Chris Davies was catching on peg 17, but apart from 4 or 5 missed bites and one bumped fish (could well have been a liner) that line remained stubbornly difficult.  had it been an individual match I would have turned it into a GB line earlier, but was still holding out the hope of a late carp.

I also tried the margin on and off and with about half an hour to go, I had my only bite down there, the float twitched and then buried, a classic carp bite, but no, an unseasonal 8oz rudd was unceremoniously hauled in on orange Vespe and 0.20.

The last 15 minutes over the GB were frustrating as tiny roach had switched on, meaning that the maggot tipped with fluoro pinkie that had accounted for 95% of my fish became an instant target for them and I sat the last 10 minutes out with 6mm meat on the hook.

My Skimmers went 29.13, enough to score 14/19 points, beaten by 4 island pegs and peg8, quite why the fish were sat in that corner and not the corner me and Adrian were trying to lure them from, I have no idea.

Team wise we had our lowest finish, 8th on the day, but given the way the results of the other teams fell, we managed to climb a place to second overall.  Really looking forward to the next round now, when I shall be on Campbell.  And Jason's confidence in setting up one lead rod and nothing else paid off, as he ended up with 67lb all caught to the island.

1: Ivan Oakey peg113 152.02
2: Chris Jones peg 114  145.03
3: Marc Jones peg 85 112.09
4: Mark Harper peg 102  105.11
5: Mash peg 53 100.02
6: Steve Seager peg 115 97.09

Silver's
1: Chris Davis peg 17  38.01
2: Chris Fox peg 15  29.13.