Viaduct Costcutter 02/01/2014

It was back down to viaduct fishery again this week for the cost cutter with Tony once again, and this time we had a certain Mr Bond in support. Tony and I thought that we had booked in for this match as we were leaving the week before but as we turned up it appeared that there had been a mix up, and we were booked in for Saturday instead.  This was quickly rectified but there was now the situation that there were pleasure anglers on Cary that would be fishing in the middle of a match, not ideal as they can use pellet wereas we could not. But off we went for the draw, Myself Jim and Tony all went a side quid and the boys drew first, Tony on 85 Cary (flyer) Jim on 114 Campbell that is an average peg at this time of year but should have been worth a few carp and some silvers. Me well I drew 77 that put me 2 pegs away from where I was last week on the other side of the aerator.

I decided on an easy day so I set up a my 11ft Black Viper feeder for the bomb, and my 13ft Champions Choice 13ft super waggler to fish a waggler around the swim.  I started on the all in by casting around the swim for 40 minutes with 3 maggots on a size 16 to 0.16mm bottom, this gave me one bite off a small roach that dropped off as I was swinging it to hand, so I cast popped up bread to the aerator for 15 minutes and at this point I realised that I may be in trouble. I had 2 pleasure anglers opposite me, the one on my left had two rods out baited with king prawn. He was also feeding pellet by the pouch full and this was working for him as every 40 minutes or so one of his alarms would go off and he would play in a carp.  I tried to move my bomb to the edge of where he was feeding (poaching) but I could not get an indication so I decided to try and catch some silvers for one thing and I started to feed meat at about 20m in front of my peg towards the tall tree.

My silvers plan was to fish a small cage feeder about halfway across the lake, and as soon as my groundbait was ready I gave it a few casts, over the next hour I managed a perch or 3oz and a Ruffe.  I also missed a couple of ratly bites but the skimmers that I was after were conspicuous by their absence, it was at this point that I decided to concentrate on mugging a carp as the lakes were obviously fishing slow and not many  people were catching at all.

I cast bread out to the aerator again and this time after 3 minutes I had a wrap round ( the wrong type of bite on bread) as I lifted the fish felt funny and I quickly realised that I had foul hooked a carp in the tail, still 10 minutes later I was putting the net under 15lb of confused mirror. Honour satisfied I started to cast around the swim with a variety of baits on the bomb and meat on the wag but to no avail until the last hour.

I decided to have a look on the line that I had been feeding for the last 3 hours and over the last hour I managed to catch 2 skimmers and another foul hooked carp. So that was it, because  I had Jimmy sat behind me he was easy to keep tabs on and had managed 3 carp and a couple of silvers for 19lb, my two carp went 26lb and my silvers were 3lb for 29lb odd and then Tony on peg 85 threw back a slack handful of silvers for a DNW. At least I had won the quid side bets if nothing else.  Back at the shop it soon became clear how close the day had been with the guy in the peg to my right managing to catch 3 carp for 33lb picking up 5^th, and 60 odd pound weights taking first and second.  I learnt a lesson, as all I needed was one more pull for 4^th or 5^th so I needed another line to try and catch a fish from and I think that a lightly fed 3ft margin line might have been the way, but I will never know.