Viaduct winter league rnd 1

It was the first match in this always popular winter teams.of 5 series, I went with Jason Radford and stopped off in burnham on sea for a breakfast in the cafe run by the people who used to run the hilltop cafe in pawlett, on the a38, I was convinced to go there by our team captain Clint wojtyla and his little mate leon Hubbard, I went for the liver breakfast, 4.35, so I will go back but only when I am going to somewhere near bridgwater, as it put over 20 miles into my normal distance.
It was down to Clayton to do the team draw today, and I got to say he was very selfish with the draw, 110 on Campbell for himself, 76  cary for clint, 103 leon, Ron on 40 and me on 2,
I had an island but it's a reasonable chuck, and after.a bit of casting, it soon became.apparent that my 10lb Berkeley iron silk line was probably to heavy to be consistent with the casting, so a mental note to replace the barbel fishing line with something better to cast with, at least it kept trig Edmunds on peg 3 amused.

After.the lead I set up a wag to fish meat out to the aerater, which can be a good option in this swim.

So it is going to be a hard series to do well in with anglers like trig and  des shipp to contend with, the nice thing about  des is that he is always happy to take a bit of time  out to help less fortunate anglers than himself, well done matey.

I then set up a couple of pole rigs, one to fish caster.at about 6 mtrs and the other for a groundbait line at 14mtrs,
At the start ,as is normal I fed all lines then picked up the lead rod, hair rigged meat.was.my choice of bait, and I launched it at the island, but it was consistently falling short, so a change.of line is definitely  called for.
There was a blue  spom sort of thing hanging from the  tree between me and trig, someone needs a casting lesson methinks, what I didn't know was that the anglers braided mainline had snapped somewhere near the  rod, so when I did fluke one and get it right to the island, when I wound in I had all this braid coming out of the water as it had gone around the island, oh well, no  doubt Steve will retrieve it before next week, any way I never had a bite on the tip to the island, but trig had three bites in the first three chucks to the island, landing two carp and losing one, so the quid bet was looking  dodgy from the start, luckily I had hedged my bets and had a quid with Weston super mares finest, mat.culpin.
So onto the pole over.the groundbait, and it was very slow mainly small roach and very occasional small skimmers, trig came back into his pole line and began catching skimmers, bugger, the pound was now looking well and truly lost, I couldn't get any quality, then I began getting small perch and tiny rudd, aaaargh, I hate little rudd, a look on the wag and meat.and I had two  bites fairly quickly, a skimmer then a roach, but that was my lot. Back on the pole and it was no better, only small fish, also the short caster line didn't really get going, I had some roach but it wasn't quick enough,.So I threw the lead out just past my wag line,  I did get two big skimmers.and a small one, then about 45 minutes from the end I hooked a carp, which fought really hard, but also I was very careful.with it as it was worth a few points it took quite a while to land but at 14lb, it was worth it, trig also had a good run of skimmers.and another carp, so I handed over.the quid straight after.the match, well done.

I didn't wait for the results so I will add the weigh sheets later.when I get them, but trig had 20lb of skimmers along with 38lb of carp to win the lake, I had the 14lb carp and over 11lb of silvers which has it turned out was only.5 oz out for the silvers money, must.try harder.
The match  was won by Dan squire with over 150lb from peg 107, fishing meat on the pole at 22.5mtrs and some.on the way aswell, well done dan.