29/07/12 - Viaduct - Campbell

Weight – 117lb 6oz (16lb 3oz – silvers)
Catch – 17 Carp, 7 Tench, 1 Bream
Weather – Mostly sunny, showers, wind increased later in the day
Match – West Tackle Open – 2^nd out of 18 (1^st in section, 1^st in silvers)

Firstly an apology for the lateness of this blog, however I’ve been in Blue Anchor (Minehead) for a week enjoying the sea air and trying to relax.

As it happened Viaduct is slightly closer to Minehead than home. Reports on arrival were of 350lb winning the midweek match, however the weather had changed to much cooler, windier conditions, with heavy overnight rain last night, I doubted those sort of weights would be repeated.

At the draw I found 119 in my hand and knew it has been a flyer, however my initial excitement was tempered when I was told it hadn’t produced in the last 2 weeks and all the weights from mid-week came from the other end of the lake.

When I arrived there was loads of scum in the corner with loads of small fish on the surface, but the good news, there was a few carp showing themselves and I was hoping a few may have followed the wind.

I decided to keep things simple to today and ignore the silvers, targeting the pallet/small tree on the end bank and down into the corner, but not too close to the sunken tree, which looked like a tackle graveyard.

On the all in a small handful of 6s went down towards the corner, starting on the full depth waggler fished towards the pallet with hair rigged 8mm pellet. After 10mins I already had 2 carp, but then lost then next 3, including 1 where the line snapped above the float where I obviously damaged the line whilst setting up.

After an hour I still only had 2 carp, plus a tench. A switch to the corner and a couple more carp followed on paste, plus a couple of tench. The next few hours were spent mostly on the waggler, but it was obvious the fish weren’t feeding hard. Steve did his usual walk around when I was landing my 7^th carp and advised that I was up there with the lake fishing generally hard.

I had now trashed 2 paste rigs in the corner, those carp certainly know where that tree is, however the swim had gone quiet, so decided to feed a ½ pot meat to try and pull the carp away from the sunken tree, fishing an 8mm cube of meat. This actually resulted in more tench and thought I may be able to pick up in the silvers, because I fully expected the pegs at the other end to have caught well and I was starting to struggle, which co-incided with the wind picking up, I did try the straight lead but that didn’t improve matters, so I struck with the waggler, even catching a couple on the pellet waggler, but to get a bite I had cast tight to the reeds.

In the end I thought I probably missed out on the frame but was hopeful of picking up the section by de-fault or silvers. I had trashed 5 rigs, so not as bad as it could be, but in hindsight I should have set up a 5m meat line, rather than focusing on the margin. The reason I didn’t was because I was a bit slow setting up and didn’t have time, being content to work the 2 lines. I could have fished the pole to the reeds at 16m, but the way my back is at the moment I didn’t fancy fishing that long.

By the time the scales arrived I knew I had 100lb and was surprised that only 1 ton had weighed in so far. Mark on 110 thought he would be close to my weight, but didn’t think he had enough, although Jono on 112 had caught well. As it turned out Jono had smaller fish and Mark reckon he lost 100lb, which is just careless if you ask me :¬)

So really pleased and a little surprised to come 2^nd with my first ever Viaduct ton. I finally feel that I’m getting to grips with the venue, with my weights increasing with every visit. Today the change in weather to much cooler conditions obviously had an effect on the fishing. Cary suffered as well with only 88lb winning a Carps AC match.

1^st 131- 1 – Nick Merry – p132
2^nd 117- 6 – Ken Rayner – p119
3^rd 99-12 – Mark Poppleton – p110
4^th 91- 5 – Jono Atkins – p112
5^th 88- 4 – Alan Aslett – p128
6^th 70- 0 – Ian “Herbie” Hornby – p127