Viaduct Holiday day 3

 Monday meant our traditional Lodge residents match on Lodge lake. We were now joined by Mark Tanner for the rest of the week and Geoff Francis came just to fish this match. Over too much beer the night before I floated the idea of making this a team match, and that’s what we did. My team consisted of Geoff peg 68, Martin peg 71 and Gary peg 73, Gordon peg 53, I was on 64 on the monk peg and could see all of my team mates on the far side.

Having fished this peg a couple of times before and always had more than 100lb I was very happy. As the match was going to be decided on weight I only set up for carp, so a paste rig for 11m, banded pellet rig 11m down RH margin, and an edge float for the LH margin. I use 0.17 hook lengths on my rigs.

As you can see in the picture to fish the RH margin you need to fish inside of the monk. I began on the paste rig today, I had bites from the off from skimmers and was happy to put something in the net. Lee Masey opposite me on 66 had nothing in front of him and so went down to his margin and started catching carp straight away. I did manage a few small stocky carp on the paste but despite catching skimmers regularly I thought I had to go down to the margin to try to stay with Lee. This was ok to start with on banded pellet but I soon began to suffer liners and foulers. I tried shallow but never got a bite, back to depth and mainly foulers. Then I started to catch branches, and I soon realised this was probably my issue.

I could see that my team mates were doing well but I was letting them down, I spent far too much time in the margin chasing fish catching branches. I was having a torrid time not helped by Lee getting one a bung. I tried the paste again and managed 1 decent carp, and also found 2 carp in the LH margin, but it was not enough and I limped home having had a poor day. Had I had a rake I may have been able to clear the margin of branches and then caught the carp that were clearly there.

As it turned out my side of the lake had fished poor compared to the opposite side. That was in my team’s favour and we won the competition 589lb to 469lb.

Lee was easy winner with 209lb and fished a great match. He had a strange caterpillar nest behind him, which I believe belongs to a small eggar moth.

We retired back to the lodge’s enjoying the evening sunshine, we decided to stay there and ordered some takeaway food and sip on the beer we all had with us. Hard to put into words how relaxing it is sitting in the fantastic scenery surrounded by wildlife. It was the next day before we headed to bed.