match lake viaduct

with nothing on unless you wanted to drive a long way a quick call to steve at viaduct and we had the match lake booked, its only a small lake with 14 pegs so it didnt take long to fill, i even had a waiting list, so after a breakfast in abbies kitchen in bishopsworth (tasty quick and clean) off we went . with everyone on time except for tom magnol who shares a house with 2 girl twins so we will let him off, the draw was done , fabio drew for me and gave mee 44, on past form its not the best of pegs , but the lake has been emptied and restocked with f1,s , small carp ,skimmers and tench so hope fully we would get some bites, for company i had john(the gimp)bradford on 43 so all the water past 6 mtrs was mine, and paul (beever)elmes on 45 who seems to miss 95% of all the bites he gets, its like being pegged next to a demented swordsman swishing his pole or waggler rod about all day for no result, even advisory phone calls from niel mercer during the day didnt help.
3 pole rigs today , all 4x10 impact 1,s . one with a 18 6313 to .10 for caster down the edge but i never had a bite on that .
one with a 18 6313 to .12 for maggot and soft pellet at 13 and 16 mtrs and anather with a 18 b960 for hair rigged banded pellet at 13 and 16.
i also set up a wag rod with a 3 aa wag to fish on the drop out by the island
at the start i cupped in some micros and a few casters at 13 some soaked 4,s at 16 mtrs , began firing some 6,s to the island and threw some casters down the edge (wot a waste of time ).
starting at 13 mtrs i didnt see the float go under after 5 mins as i was watching fabio land a skimmer on 46 and i was talking to mr long , but as they are new fish they dont let go and after a bit of a merry dance on number 6 elastic a 1lb carp was in the bag and that was the last bite i had on single maggot , double maggot produced a few skimmers a and a 3lb bream over that line , after about 1 1/2 hours i couldnt raise another bite on that line so i put a soft pellet on and shipped out to 16 mtrs and missed a bite so back out with the 6mm banded pellet and another carp was on its way. the fish certainly didnt seem to want much bait chucked at them , so it was a case of feeding a few pellets and fishing on it until you had a fish then repeating the process. with about 2 hours to go i tried the wag , i took 4 quick carp and another skimmer then never had another bite on that, so it was a case of feeding the 2 pole lines and swapping between the 2 picking up odd fish here and there , looking round the lake i couldnt see any one really catching except for tom magnol on 50 who had been catching fish on the feeder during the first half of the match, but his swim had died for the second half , considering the ammount of fish that they have put in ,it was strange that it was a real struggle to put more than 1 or 2 bites together from any one area , we also had some torrential rain it was so heavy at times i had to take shot off my rigs so i could see the floats, the scales told the story of the lake as it had been very hard for everyone and my 25.8 was enough for first which included top silver with 9.14 of skimmers
2nd tom magnol 18.12 mainly with maggot on the feeder peg 50
3rd dean malin 14.00 peg 42
4th j bradford 12.2 peg 43
5th phil harding 10.15 peg 46
6th g wall 9.2 peg 51
it was good to see acouple of old friends back in the shop this week firstly bill milton who has been really ill since last november but went to rood ashton today on the team veals match , i hope he enjoyed it and is ok. then stuart barnett who went to oz 14 years ago but has come back to celebrate his 50 th birthday, he,s hardly changed except that he seems a bit shorter than i remember amd less hair but then again thats the same for all of us!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!