It's fair to say that myself and the rest of the regular attendees to this week of match fishing in June always look forward to this and can't wait to go again. Being on garden leave meant I had more time to prepare and sort things out this year which was really nice. This year along with myself we had Woody (top organiser), Glenn Bailey, Gary Bowden, Geoff Francis, Martin Reyat, Mark Tanner, Gordon Cannings and two new crew members, Haydn Withers and Tony Wittcomb.
Draw times for the opens at Viaduct are always 9am, and I arrived at 8:30 in good time to meet and greet etc. Full house of 21 anglers fishing today and I was quite happy to draw peg 128 which is on the left hand side of the spit, not fished this peg for a very long time. Howard Webb has been almost unbeatable here recently on carp, he's been fishing with a PVA bag on the lead, using maggots, worms or peas on the hook. However, I had assumed that carp could still be caught on paste, straight lead etc and that I could enjoy myself and sneak into the frame if I fished a good match, plus Howard drew 121 and decided to fish for silvers.
My view in front..
I set up a straight lead, a pellet wag, paste rig, margin rig for fishing a third the way along the spit, and a shallow pole rig in case the carp came shallow, although not many were showing themselves. I started the match on the lead feeding 6mm pellets over the top, it wasn't too long before I started to get the odd liner and see some fizzing, but it took me an hour to finally get a carp on the hook and in the net. As there were odd carp swirling in the feed I tried the pellet wag, this method is not great here anymore but can have its day. I caught a carp on this after about 10 minutes, but that was it and nothing else happened. The paste line was not showing any signs of life, and word was nobody was catching on it at this stage.
Halfway through the match and with only 2 carp and a couple of skimmers in the net I was way behind Jack Stamp and Gary Bowden above the rope on 126 and 125. but most other people were really struggling. I fed some 4mm pellets to the spit and in no time at all it fizzed up, which surprised me as I was just planning to feed it for later. After 10 minutes it was still fizzing, so I fed another small amount of 4mm and went over it with a bit of paste. I had a good bite after 15 seconds and was playing a carp that pulled hard as it swam up the spit. Managed to get this one in the net at about 7lb. Next drop and hooked another that got round the spit and was spotted by Woody on 129 just as it broke the line. The fed area was still fizzing, so I dropped in again and hooked another carp which I landed. However, next drop and hooked another which seemed to swim under the spit lol, I pulled hard, and unfortunately it was too much for my number 4 section to take and "bang" it broke clean off. The top set and half number 4 ended up by the spit and didn't move, it was impossible to get it with the lead rod and so I had no choice but to get in the lake and retrieve it. I swam to the top set and swam back to the platform, tricky to get back out onto the platform but I did it. Then realised the carp was still attached! I played the fish in and landed a near 8lb mirror. I dried myself, got dressed and went back to my van to get my margin pole which I had stupidly left there, doh.
I got back changed the rig over to the margin pole and tried the margin again, but thought it might be dead, but I did hook one and got it out, but that was it, guess I had caught the residents. Luckily the sun was out on me and wind off my back so I didn't feel cold at all, just left my pants to dry out lol. The fishing was hard for me after this until the last 90 minutes, I then got the odd carp on paste, but had lots of foulers, and had one more from the margin. In the last 10 minutes I hooked a carp on paste, it jumped out a few times, looked about 12lb hooked in the tail. This would be a long wait to get in I thought if I was lucky. The next thing I knew top set and number 4 section shot of the rest of the pole like an arrow into the lake and got towed off... I had completely forgot to check the pole sections for tightness, schoolboy error. The sections ended up in front of Gary Bowden, who kindly of his accord stopped fishing in his margin (where he was catching) and tried to hook the sections with is lead rod. He succeeded but must of hooked the elastic and it snapped leaving the sections listing about 20 metres out. Match over and I launched myself off Gary's platform and dived into the lake (much laughter was evident despite my ears full of water lol). Not easy swimming with pole sections, but there was no rush, and had Gary to help pull me out, thanks mate.
In the lake twice in one day, that's never happened before, and in fact that was the first time I snapped a section on my XS90 on a fish. Let's just say it was quite a topic of discussion that evening.
My fish weighed in at 83lb 12oz, of which 10lb was skimmers. That was not enough to get me the default section prize which went to Steve Denmead on 123 with 106lb.
1st Jack Stamp 298lb peg 126, pva bag then later in margins
2nd Gary Bowden 163lb peg 125, lead and later in margins
3rd Toby Burrell 119lb peg 118
Silvers was won by Tony Wittcomb with a great 72lb of skimmers from peg 124.
What I learned today, there were hardly any carp caught the car park side of the rope (only Martin Preston very late on the pva bag) and many people fishing for carp on paste or pellet struggled.
A pleasant evening ensued in Somerton and we were joined by Mike Nicholls who had arrived earlier in the day to watch us for a few hours.
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