viaduct weds open

made a change not driving down in the ice , and the only ice left on the lakes were in the carpark corners of cambell and cary and as there was 29 booked in that was the only 2 lakes being used, so there would be plenty of room. i got to the front of the draw queue as my theory is that all the goood pegs are in there to draw, as are the bad pegs, in went the lucky left hand and out came 125, which is at the top end of cambell , a good draw in warmer weather but not at this time of year as all the fish tend to hole up at the carpark end as there is a spring running in with a temperature at a constant 10 c is it any wonder the fish dont want to come to far up the lake. so the plan today was silvers again(seems like months since i caught a carp), for company i had ray hayward to my right and alan oram to my left. again 2 rigs both being 4x16 to .10 one with a 20 808 to fish over the g bait, and one with an 18 808 for the caster line both on top sets with 3-6 j range hollow elastic with pulla bungs just in case. on the shout which as normal was over 2mins late by everyones watch but pauls and steve,s. i cupped in a ball of g bait at 16 mtrs straight out and about 50 casters with a few mags at 16 mtrs towards 10 o,clock , then began at 4 mtrs on caster as you some times get the odd big perch there , but not today i think it was a bit to clear, so after 30 mins it was out to 16 mtrs with single maggot over the g bait it was about 15 mins later that i had a skimmer of about 4 oz, i had a few skimmers during the next hour then it went quiet so another ball laced with caster went in and it was time to look at the caster line, single caster on the hook , 2 missed bites then a 4oz roach, not really what i wanted , i was really after perch , so e re fed and went back over the g bait , and i had a skimmer straight on a lift bite , so i slid 2 no 10,s down to about 5 inches from the hook , then every bite was an unmissable lift bite , the skimmers seem to hang on to the hook bait when its fished this way, then the wind got up blowing in and across making presentation difficult as the trip goes with the wind pushing the rig through to quick, so i spread the droppers ,deep,nd up a couple of inches to try and slow down the rigs progress and it seemed to work as i had agood perch over the g bait which is a bit unusual as the seem to prefer just caster , i actually had 2 perch over the g bait and 2 over the caster line , and the 4 perch probably went about 9 lb between them which was dead handy and still getting odd skimmers to the end i reckoned i had about 17lb which looked good for a section win as 2 carp was the best in my section as far as i could see. when steve arrived with the scales i was more than happy to weigh 20.7 which looked like getting me in the silver ,s money as the only other person to catch any silvers of note was mat parsons who ended up with 29.10 of skimmers taken 50 50 on the long pole and open ended feeder on peg 100 on cary.
the match was won by george perkins on 85 with 221.2 20 odd fish taken on staight lead with triple red maggot hook bait.
2nd alan perkins on 128 with 116.12some on the wag and some on the lead ,also on maggot the result making it a son and father first and second fairplay to them
3rd jason atkins 76.9 on peg 130
4th mat parsons 41.8 peg 100
5th ivan oakey 37.9 peg 97
6th barry fitchew 30.10 peg 96
good to see helen has been out and bought some new cups for the tea and coffee shame i never got one , i think the last time my cup saw liquid was when steve used to keep his false teeth in it at night it had more stains than some ones under crackers who is suffering from c diff!!!!!!lol
i heard another strange one to day , i dont know how true it is but i heard that the bathampton match secretary has cancelled the canal match at the weekend as no one can get any bloodworm and joker, whats wrong with bread , caster , maggots etc oh yes i was forgetting he doesnt sell them at the draw. i dont understand why the club let him do it as they rely on the shops to sell there licences and day tickets nuff said mr crookes and co