Weight - 88lb 7oz
Catch - 18 Carp, 6 Skimmers, 1 Roach
Weather - Mostly sunny with showers & windy.
Water Temp - 25.2c > 26.1c
Match - Match Fishing Scene - 11th out of 20
I arrived at the venue in real need of a decent breakfast and I wasn't disappointed, which made we feel less groggy. Yesterday (Friday) I spent at Lords watching England beat the Aussies in the first ODI. I was invited by one of the companies I do business with, which meant free food and booze all day. Needless to say, not being the big drinker, I certainly felt the effects of what was a great day out, but due to a rain delayed start, it meant a late finish. So a really long day and an early start today with a hangover is not recommended. Fred Roberts suggested I was being a lightweight - yep, not going to argue with that.
Today there are 20 members from the MFS site and I was pleased to find myself on 110. Campbell and Cary had been hammered all week due to a private "festival" and the most consistant area was the bottom end. I didn't expect that to change today, because the wind was still blowing down that end, although we were greeted by spawning fish.
As mentioned before Viaduct is a bit of a bogie venue for me and I have struggled to get to grips with it and I received plenty of advice from the regulars on how to fish the peg. I was in danger of confusing myself, however the one bit of information that was repeated was to fish to the end bank. So I had a pellet waggler, a drake loaded insert waggler to fish on the deck and the lead which I hoped I wont need. The pole rigs were easy, one for meat and one for paste, which would do for fishing 13m as well as down the left hand margin since the depth was fairly uniform.
I started down by the stump on meat and soon had a carp and a couple of skimmers, but those were the only fish I had from here. A few more skimmers and a carp came from the 14m line again on meat.
However, whilst a switch to the pellet waggler, saw an immediate response. The problem was that stump. Any hooked fish would kite left into the corner, which in itself wasnt that much of issue, but the foliage on the stump as well as the overhanging willow branches (which included someones pole rig), meant I couldnt manoeuver the fish and I got done several times. I got fed up of this and had to go round and pull out the offending foliage. Unfortunately I couldnt do anything about the overhanging branches. When I did fish down the edge I got done again! In total I lost 12 carp, some were foul hooked, but most were in the mouth and I got a little irritated (as everyone heard!). This wasnt helped by the fact I was starting to fish like a muppet, as I was losing my composure - I was hooking my keepnet, rigs were tangling and to really illustrate how things were going, I landed a carp that I had pulled out of the margin, which had managed to wrap someones loaded pellet waggler around my rig. The fish dived to the near margin as I netteded it, but with this waggler swinging around it got caught up on one of my spare top kits that was in my pole roost.
With 2hours to go, my frustration reached its limit as another lost fish meant I needed to go for a walk for 5mins. After having a word with myself I actually had a good last 2 hours, losing very few fish, catching on paste down the edge, then on the full depth waggler towards the end bank and a couple on meat at 5m.
I really should have framed today and had I landed half the fish I lost I probably would have. Taking the positives out of the day, this was my best weight at Viaduct (told you it was a bogie venue) and I ended up wishing the match would finish later as I was having a nice time on the waggler.
1st 191-2 - Richard Wyatt - p119 (pole/pellet shallow to the end bank)
2nd 131- 8 - Gareth Boycott - p128
3rd 117- 8 - Ian McCulloch - p132
4th 115-13 - Mark Poppleton - p112
5th 98-11 - Craig - p117
6th 96-13 - Fred Roberts - p113
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