Due to family commitments on Sunday I had to pick a venue for Saturday, not too difficult as Viaduct is a cracking venue! When I arrived at the car park two other Bristol lads were unloading gear, Paul Elms and Craig "Trig" Edmunds. Paul said he would have given me a lift had he known I was fishing, trouble is neither of us are psychic. A glance at Lodge lake took my breath away, as there were carp sunbathing in very large numbers.
I somehow (chatting) ended up very nearly at the end of the draw queue, and I could see most of the pegs I fancied had gone, but 110 was still in, instead though I pulled 129 on the spit. Trig was behind me and did his usual drawing act pulling 110! I was told by Paul Greenwood and John Green that peg 129 had been good for silvers, in this case tench, although I was given differing opinions on how they have been caught, meat and corn, paste, in close, 11mtr.... Anyway, as it was thought that the corner pegs were going to dominate the carp weights I made up my mind to go for silvers but have carp options just in case. I set up a pellet wag for the carp, no lead rod (Tony would be proud), a paste rig with 0.16 to size 10 B911 for 5mtr, a pellet rig for the same line, and a rig for the margin in the corner on 0.18 where I would feed meat and corn for the tench. At the start I fed a full pot of meat and corn in the corner, and half a pot of 6mm pellets and some paste at 5mtr. Starting on the paste I had small fizzes and was getting indications but few bites, I did net a couple of skimmers but after an hour things were slow. I'd been feeding a few 8mm pellets by catty so picked up the wag to see if the carp would play. A carp first chuck was followed by a couple more before all signs of fish disappeared.
I then spent the next 2 hours swapping between the pellet rig and paste rig at 5mtrs, I caught the odd skimmer and a couple of carp. Halfway through and I went into the margin on meat looking for the tench, and caught 2 carp and got snapped! I did manage to catch 4 tench in the margin and 1 skimmer, but also had a few more carp that did the silvers in. Back on the paste for the last hour and this line was now solid.... with carp! So I took what fish I could knowing that my chances for any coin were long gone as I could see the guy on 132 had bagged on carp as had Lewis Greenwood on 112.
My silvers weighed 34lb and the carp 66lb for a total of 100lb 11oz. So I had a good days fishing which was nice! It hadn't really fished that well on my side of the lake(bar pegs 123 and 132) the guy to my right fished the lead all day and beat me by 4oz, on the other side of the spit there was a 80lb and Chris Fox had 70lb+.
Trig won the silvers on 110 with 66lb of mainly skimmers and tench (plus 2 nice perch) on meat. He went home happy as he also won the section meaning he went home with more money than the individual winner! So it was a case of being beaten by the lead yet again, and not getting enough silvers. In hindsight I think I may have been able to do a weight of carp on the pole, but we will never know now and I don't let these things wind me up these days. I'm going to have to work on this meat fishing, I need to catch a few on it to get the confidence in the method though.
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