Viaduct silvers I've rnd 1

I was looking forward to this league, it makes a pleasant change from hauling carp, and it as popular as most other leagues at this well run fishery, I travelled down with Chris fox so it was breakfast at the Toby inn carvery in whitchurch, and it was ok , a 4.25, shame they have made the plates smaller, lol.
Still got to the fishery in plenty of time for the draw, and all the usual suspects were in attendace,
I got into the draw quite late by my standards, and was a bit disappointed to see peg 119 looking back at me, it's a corner peg on cary which isn't the best normally for silvers, unless the big perch show up down to the right into the corner underneath the willow tree, but today it looked unlikely as I could see carp slurping off the branches. And after a bit of a frost and bright sunshine and no wind I wasn't expecting miracles,  but it did look nice.

For company I had the irrepressible gabe skarba on 118 with Mrs gabe sat behind him, who is fast becoming his bite spotter, as she had to tell him on several occasions to strike. Kev Newman was on 121, and rich aherne opposite on 123, so no pushover there then.
I set up a perch rig for down the right hand margin, but I only tried it a couple of times, and only had a couple of small roach, but with lots of carp under the branches, so I didn't persevere to much with it, two rigs for  out in front over groundbait with a bit of worm and caster in it, one more positive than the other for worm or triple maggots and the other for smaller maggot baits or single caster, I also set up a rig to fish to hand with maggot.
gabe set a wag which may have been a good option, except he kept catching the tree above his head just plumbing up, after hooking it for the third time in as many goes he put it away, I tried to get a pic of him tree wrestling, but he was too quick for me lol.
at the start I cupped in two balls at 11 mtrs and three at 14mtrs, wasted.a.few.casters.down the edge but started on the topset to hand, caught small fish from the off, but two to the ounce wasn't going to cut it today, have was doing the same,
Gabe soon got bored with this and went out on his longer line , and had a skimmer quite quickly, so I did the same, I had a small one but that was it, gabe had a bit of a run on small skimmers, whereas I say there with a motionless float. Kev on 121 was getting fish on his topset line, but most of the lake was fishing hard, plenty of carp were being hooked all round though.
As the match went on skimmers began to feed but were constantly being disrupted by marauding carp, gabe was getting more skimmers.than me but they weren't the biggest, when I did get one they were of a better stamp, up to 2 1/2 pounds, also rich opposite had some better ones plus some perch down his edge, it was a waiting  game for me, sat with triple maggot over both groundbait lines,  I the time the match was over I was still convinced that gabe had battered me, but after I weighed in first and put 26lb on the scales I thought it would be close, and it was a he beat me with 26.8, still I thought second in section would be ok,rich opposite was admitting to 20lb,  it then when the scales finally reached him he had 26.3, bugger, at least he enjoyed it, and mrs Gabe was smiling when I handed my.pound over, at least ziggy,s pound covered that one.
And to add insult.to injury a wheel bracket weld broke on the way back to the carpark, three wheels on the wagon makes for a very difficult push, thanks to Dave white for giving me a hand back to my van,
Considering the conditions the silvers fed quite well, with that man trig winning again from peg 99 with just over 50lb of skimmers on soft pellet initially then maggot over the same, second was dick bull on 103 with 39lb, I think I was 11th with 26lb, so it fished ok, weigh sheets below.