Viaduct float only match, lodge and spring lakes

For those who don't know, Martin Rich lost his battle with cancer last weekend , as with anyone who passes away within this big family of angling  he will be missed, the funeral is on Tuesday 2md of April at canford at 4 pm. There is a wake planned at The Baileys Court , Bradley Stoke, anyone planning to go if they can let the family or give me a quick ring at the shop as the pub needs to know for food .

Back to today's match, and when I booked it I only booked lodge lake hence the float only tag, but with people looking for a match I was soon back on the phone and got the use of match lake, by the time we got to the morning I had 27 names , but on the way to the fishery I had a call from steve and the match lake was double booked sort of, as the boys from chard were down for a practice on match lake so steve said we could use spring lake as there was a distinct lack of pleasure anglers,
We ended up with 26 fishing as andy France had a bit of a senior moment and was waiting for us all to arrive at landsend fishey DOH.
We put 13 on each lake and with sections and lake winners in silvers and overalls to play for ther was a reasonable chance of covering the daily costs.
I let dave romain draw for me , he pulled 2 tickets and I took one, opened it and was looking at 69, and from memory it was always a popular number ,but I can't remember why, dave was left looking at 11 over on spring which didn't really excite him, looking out at my peg from the warmth of the shop it didn't look to inviting with the biting easterly wind blowing in and across, and with the wind chill probably at minus 3 it was never going to be enjoyable even if the float did keep going under.
Pellet had been allowed since Wednesday and all the silver weights had fallen to banded pellet so I was going to base my attack around this, I even gave my groundbait to Aaron britnell, I was that confident the pellet was going to work. I didn't think I had much chance of winning the lake as I had
 dan squire on 53, dean malin on 66 and Tom thick on 64, so I fully expected these to throw up the
lakes top weights. I set up 1 pole rig to fish banded pellet at 13 mtrs, the wind prevented me going any further, and a wag rod for pellet towards the middle of the lake, as far as the wag goes I couldn't stop or slow the float from travelling with the wind so I didn't have a single bite on it, not even a liner, at the start I cupped in some 4,s on the pole line then shipped the rig out, the float settled and went straight under, then I remembered I hadn't plumbed up, I think the cold had already got int my brain, so after sorting that it was back out , and the first bite after 10 mins resulted in a carp on the end, I don't think it was hooked in the right end and it soon broke me some where in Alan oram,s peg to my right in 70. The first hour was a lot quieter the anticipated with only 2 skimmers for just over a pound, the named anglers and peg were now getting a few carp so the overall money was out the window, and at the halfway mark silvers were also looking out of reach, it was about now Tom mangnall over on 57 put some groundbait in and promptly caught 2 skimmers, now where was my groundbait, bugger over on spring lake with Aaron, so it was off my box for a scrounge , luckily Alan  had a bit of gimps which I nicked, I mixed it and put in 4 balls on a separate line then made a rig up,
Dropping in with caster or maggot over the new line and I was soon catching small roach, which was
better than nothing, I did get one big skimmer over the pellet line on banded pellet but the remainder of the match was spent over the g bait where I had 2 more big skimmers and a few small samples plus plenty of small roach and one good perch of about a pound, by the end I thought I had double figures of silvers, I had lost two more good skimmers towards the end when the maggot folded over the hook, but with little or no sensible presentation due to the weather I don't think you can really odds that, it was obvious dan on 53 was going to win the lake as he had quite a few carp fishing banded pellet at varying distances between 16 & 19 mtrs ,and dean on 66 had 8 carp so that was going to be second on the lake, as it turned out the normally reliable skimmers on lodge lake had a proper off day  but over on spring it was a different story with the silvers going mad, dave romain managed to moan so much about his peg the skimmers felt sorry for him and turned up in mass as he had a massive 80.14 of them on soft pellet between 13&14 mts, incredible really considering the weather, there must have been a huge shoal there as mike west next door on 10 had 50lb of them aswell and that was after fishing for carp for the first half of the match

1st on the day was dan squire with 100.4
2nd dave romain 80.14
3rddea