Quite typical of my luck, which seems to be very best indifferent, at worst dreadful, I couldn't make last weeks match where the fish seemed to spread out a little and all have a munch. The temperature duly dropped again for this weeks match, which I could make, so would that revert the fishing back to pre last Wednesday's spectacular!!
The journey down was not one to inspire, currently where I live I am trapped in by roadworks and temporary traffic lights in both directions I can go to head towards Viaduct, so an earlier than usual start. The traffic wasn't as bad as expected leaving home, but Temple Cloud had single file traffic, light controlled and for a change I decided to go vis Wells, Glastonbury and Street - bad decision, the road between Glastonbury was closed off and a sea of blue flashing lights was evident. The hastily switched on Sat Nav (Waze app on phone, its very good, worth getting and its free) sent me down some lanes past Milfields playing fields and so to Viaduct with a minute to spare.
The draw seemed to be kind, peg 18, with only 9 fishing most pegs were spread out, but I had Steve Kedge on 19 and Paul Faiers on 16 for company. I set up two wagglers, one to fish corn across and another to fish caster/maggot over the pole line. A 3 square feeder clipped up to get just short of the island and two pole rigs were assembled, only set up two because of a 6" depth variation between the two lines I wanted to fish.
Put some GB and caster in at the start on two lines, both 14m, one straight in front and one off to my right. Started on the waggler and corn, but after 40 minutes there had been not so much as a liner on it. Steve had taken a couple of fish on the feeder and I should have picked it up there and then, but such is my hatred of fishing it, I persevered with the waggler and pole for too long and was struggling to get a bite. A switch from caster to dead maggot, or actually, dead pinkie, saw a few small skimmers netted, but it was pointless catching them.
Finally picked up the feeder after a couple of hours and was well behind Steve, all that did was put a skimmer, a hybrid and a small roach in my net and it did seem to kill off Steve's feeder line. All the while I was feeding corn, expecting to catch on it later in the match. I had a short burst of fish on the pole again, but small 2-3oz fish, compared to the 12oz-2lb fish Steve was getting.
I refed the pole line to the right with an hour and a half to go and this did induce some activity, a bit of blowing over it. I left it to rest and tried the waggler and corn, by now Steve was catching well on this and my float, despite being 12-15yards away from his, remained motionless, apart from two skimmers in a 40 minute spell, whereas Steve was getting an indication every chuck.
Last half hour back over the blowing pole line and two big skimmers hooked and lost, just about summed up my day, poor decision not to go on the feeder early, probably fed too much GB as the fish seemed to be sat above it, not looking for food, too reliant on caster, which really didn't work as it often does and it did appear those fish did not want to budge from the end of the island at the end.
So a proper battering from Steve who won with 42lb to my pretty pathetic 13lb, I just couldn't sort out the quality fish. Shame I haven't got a Wednesday off for a few more weeks as I'd like to try and put that right, 19 has been a better peg, but not that much better, so I certainly got something wrong with the pole line feeding.
No comments:
Post a Comment