Wednesday 2nd April - Viaduct

Well, I have got a bit behind lately with this blog due to work and home commitments. Anyway I have now started to catch up and I begin with the wednesday open I fished at Viaduct in Somerton to try and get up to speed before the Fish-o-mania qualifier that I had managed a ticket for.

This time rather than my usual travelling partner Mark Poppleton, I was being picked up by a good friend from work Mark Brennan who fishes for Thatchers. He collected me nice and early to give us plenty of time to get there and get the kit out the van before the draw, I prefer it that way because I can get straight off to my peg and give myself as much time as I can to set up.

At the draw I was first in the Que and hoping for peg 85 or 86 on Cary, but as per usual I managed to NOT draw either of those pegs and pulled out Peg 102 on Cary. Having never fished the peg, I spoke to Matt Parsons (Son of one of the lakes owners.) about the peg I had drawn, and he confirmed my fears that it wasn't too good a draw. But after my last session at Willinghurst I left for my peg hoping that the fish had decided to move about a bit.

As it turned out I was pleased to find that I had an end peg with no-one any closer to the carpark that was off to my left, and a spare peg between me and the next angler so felt that I had a reasonable chance to catch a few fish with the space I had.

After plumbing around I decided on 3 pole lines the first was to be long at 14.5m fishing pellet for the carp, the second was at 6m for the skimmers if the carp were not playing ball. (Viaduct usually pays top 2 silvers weights as well as top 3 overall.) and the 3rd was long down the margins to my left in front of the next pallet. With the wind blowing in against the bank I really fancied it for a few fish. The finally I set up my trusty lead rod to fish out towards the middle of the lake, this was to be my opening line while the pole lines settled.

I spent the first hour fishing the lead trying to snare a few carp on the lead with double Carp Vader halibut crab pellets on the hair. Feeding hard pellets over the top via the catapult, to say it was rather slow would be exaggerating. It took me 40min to get my first bite which resulted in a tench, then a further 20min before I put my first carp in the net. This was about the time the wheels really fell off.
My plan had been to spend the first hour or so fishing for the carp, and unless I was catching well switch to the skimmers for the following 4 hours before switching back to the carp. While setting up the wind was stiff but manageable, but as the match started the wind began to get stronger to the point that I couldn't fish my 14.5m pole line, which was OK because I'd fed at 6m for the skimmers or so I thought.
First put in on my skimmer line and it was obvious that it was solid, as the float just settled then disappeared. Most of the fish I was catching were about 4 to 6oz but I felt confident that if I kept the bait going in the bigger fish would move in. But the problem of the wind was getting worse and had started to cause me to loose fish, as I was hooking the fish and the wind would catch the pole and tear the hook out of their mouths. I gave it about half an hour before giving up as to do a weight you need to be putting fish steadily in the net and I was losing fish after fish due to the wind.
This left me with 1 choice, and that was to go back out on the tip for the carp, the thing is it can be boring fishing when your not getting many bites, and bites were hard to come by and there appeared to be no pattern to it except that I'd get a couple of carp then nothing for ages and no matter what I did I just couldn't keep the coming.
After a while the wind calmed down enough for me to try my margin line, and although I was convinced that I'd catch a few down the edge, I didn't even have a bite. It was one of those matches where I was glad to hear the final whistle and wasn't surprised when I weighed in 46lb and I would guess last in the section the match was won by Martin Preston off of peg 85 with 207lb. I was apperent at the end of the match that the fish were still shoaled quite tight as Dave Britten 2 pegs away on peg 87 had struggled for just a handfull of fish.