Viaduct Silvers League Round 1, Sunday 1st October 2017

Sadly unable to make all the matches in this great league due to work, but have offered myself up as a reserve for the dates I can make.  Today I was I believe I was fishing for Steve Denmead.  Travelled down with Tony Rixon and chanced Cannards Well for breakfast, fair play to them, they have invented a new dish Sausage Tartare - I like steak tartare, but pink raw sausages do not make for a good breakfast!!

Onto the fishing and I drew 86, a peg I fancied for a few bites but is not known for regularly producing the better quality skimmers usually needed to make a framing weight.  I had drawn in the area a couple of years back in this league and pellet was by far the best bait, so I decided on a GB/caster line at 14m and a pellet line at 11m, with a rig to fish under the tree to my right, as I have had some quality roach late on in past matches.

Also a waggler and cage feeder set up, to fish a bit further out if that proved necessary.

Starting on the 11m line I fed some micros and a few 4mm's and started on an expander, this was slow going and a switch to a dead maggot on the hook saw a few small (2oz) skimmers come to the net, but it was slow going.  Looking round the lake no one was catching well, so I stuck at it and continued putting similar sized fish in the net.  After an hour I went out on the longer line, trying worm and caster on the hook, I did have one 6 oz skimmer, but that was at the expense of several hooklengths to the carp which were very active over this line.

I did try feeding corn further out and fish that on the waggler, but that was also snaffled by the greedy waterpigs.  Back to the pellet line at 11m and I introduced some GB and worm, this increased the bites, but not the size of fish, but I kept something going in the net.

I did manage a 2lb perch, a couple of 8-10 oz hybrids and a couple of better roach under the tree towards the end and two better skimmers, but this was only enough for 3rd in section, being beaten by two pegs on the diagonal bank, both of whom had better quality fish.  I felt I fished a tidy match, taking top weight of 22.10 on the riverbank side of Cary, but the lack of quality stumped me.


1. Craig Edmunds - 39lb 12oz - peg 123
2. Gary Webber - 39lb 2oz - peg 115
3. Ziggy Slowinski - 37lb 6oz - peg 126
4. Tony Rixon - 36lb 3oz - peg 94
5. Sam Powell - 35lb 8oz - peg 98
6. Chris Davis - 35lb 2oz - peg 77