Viaduct winter league round 1

Tha draw for this series is in the pub in somerton, where for a fiver it's a help yourself brekkie, which is very nice as the food is good quality but it does tend to be a bit cool at times, but it is very good value for money, I'll be back .
This first match determines the rotation of lakes for the team, so into the draw tin and I pull out letter E so with my name at the top of the team sheet I was on spring lake today and for the rest of the series I will be on cambell next ,then Cary followed by lodge then match lake last, doing it this way gives the anglers a bit more chance to prepare and even practice if they feel the need, next  was to draw a number which gives us out sequence of pegs for the day, I pulled 10 which gave us 123/87/59/1 and me on 11, a couple of. Reasonable pegs but not the best draw in the tin, as it was my birthday I was expecting a birthday peg doh , peg 12 is far from good, in the spring lake section generally speaking you are looking for an island chuck or a couple of the corners, peg 11 is neither, unless you are one those who push the limits of there swims in which case you could throw the angler on 16 a deffy and throw in his peg, but that's not me (honest) especially when the angler on that peg was a nice bloke in the shape of steve Skelton , and he wouldn't have done it to me, lol.
For company I was next to minuscule travelling partner, Jason Radford on 12 and welsh lead chucking legend glyn Reynolds on 10, who being the gent that he is offered me the option of casting to the tree in front of him but I declined, mainly due to the fancy that by he had finished trying to lip up close to the tree, the 30 attempts had probably scared most of the large scaly foe well out of the swim !!!!! Ha ha .
The pound bet was struck with glyn, and with the. Odd times we had had a bet I don't think he has beaten me, but he does normally carry a stupid yellow bobble hat around for his conquests to where so he can put it on FB with the beaten handing there quid over, so that was a spur on for me .
I set up today to fish corn on the wag over towards the island but about 20 mtrs off, and two pole rigs, one for 4 mtrs with caster over caster as sometimes some good perch show along this bank, and a skimmer rig to fish over groundbait and caster at 14 mtrs, at the start I fed the relevant pole lines by which time I think steve long on 19. Was playing a carp caught against the island, so I picked up the wag with apiece of corn on, there was a bit of pull on the lake even though there was no wind at the mo , but third cast the float buried and I had a carp on, after a careful 5 minute fight a nice ten pound common was in the net, good start. But the wind picked up a bit pushing the float through to much , I did have another bite on the wag but it looked more like a liner and the corn was still on the hook when I wound in.
I did try it for over an hour but nothing was happening, there kad been a couple more carp caught by the island anglers and in two of the corners, so I was still in the mix really, time for the pole, starting on the 4 mtr line with caster only a couple of small roach , so probably no perch in residence at present, so out to 14 mtrs, first two put ins and two lost skimmers gutted, after that it became a bit harder as you would expect, when I did get e bite it was from small skimmers and roach, with the water being clear you can't really afford to bump these fish. I spent the rest of the match swapping between the two pole lines catching small fish, I did manage skimmers to 12 oz aswell as perch of the same size but it wasn't good , especially as some anglers now had two or three carp off the form pegs, Jason to my left had a couple of small fish and glyn to my right had caught a couple of shell shocked skimmers on the feeder, perhaps I should have chucked the tip out and tried to snag a couple of carp but with the anglers each side doing that for most of the match to no avail I think I made the right choice, and at least I felt I was doing something other than an asda gnome impression, by the end I new I was going to be a bit down the lake section as there were a few anglers with two or more good carp which would be enough to beat me, as expected our bank was dire, Dom Sutherland on 13 had 2oz, Jason had 1.7 I had 18.8 with the help of the 10.2 carp and 8.6 of silvers, glyn had 6lb & Chris fox on 9 had 5lb, the lake weights all came from a couple of corners and island pegs, I left before the results but I know trigger won off peg 73 on lodge dobbing bread up and down his margin for about 150lb, there was another ton on lodge on 66, aswell as 97 on Cary and 110 & 132 on cambell, silvers didn't really feed probably due to the bright skies and clear water, I think about 15lb won that off spring, mike nicholls has probably got the weigh sheets on his blog,
Thursday I am off to emerald again, so that will be a few bites even in this cold weather, so give me a ring on. 07974807941 or ring veals on 01179260790 and book with me or mike jones to book in.