Viaduct Open (Cary & Lodge lakes).

Traveling With Don again today which is nice as there plenty of room in his van for all of the kit we seem to take these days' with the draw time being later at 9.30 we had plenty of time for breakfast at hilltops first, first thing to notice today was how pleasant the weather was with the sun out and hardly any wind" 23 fishing today meaning most anglers would be on Cary and a section on Lodge with a three peg overspill onto Cary, Yesterdays open was won from peg 81 with a total of  270lb so a draw on this lake would be nice'.

Near the front of the draw today hoping for a favoured draw saw me on 73 Lodge which is not the lake I was hoping for as I felt the best weights would be off Cary but I did have a corner peg with a tree in the water at 17mts which I was told held fish although I didn't plan to fish this far as I would be asking for trouble' so after pluming along from 11-14mts a found around 4ft of water just out from the bank which seemed snag free so a 4x12 rig on 0.15-0.13 to a 18 PR478 was made up to fish this line as well as to my inside left towards the next pallet in the same depth of water , I had another rig set up to fish a slightly heavier 4x14 made up on 0.13-0.11 for the open water at 6mts were I would feed meat by hand, last of all a bomb was set up to fish punched meat out into the open water.

At the all in I fed around half a pot of 6mm meat onto the inside left and the same towards the tree on my right at 11mts as I wanted to gauge my swim first rather than push fish further back towards the tree, after adding a palm full of meat onto the 6mt line I began on the bomb and punched 10mm meat and after 30 mins of casting around the peg I hadn't had so much as a liner so I swapped to meat on the 6mt line where I had been flicking some in by hand. A couple of missed bites saw me swap to a single cube and as a result started to catch roach so was soon topping the swim up with half a pot of meat and switch to my 11mt swim towards the tree with two 6mm cubes on the hook, another 15mins past and still no carp and after trying down to the right without success I new I had to fish further towards the tree so I fed another half pot at 14mts and went back on the 6mt line. I managed a couple of skimmers before hooking a flyer' which came off and killed it stone dead! back on the pole towards the tree I foul hooked a fish first put in which did its best to climb the branches before sheading the hook but at least it was a sign they were there and the rig came back intact so back in and ten mins later my first carp after 2hrs' of around 8lb was a start, I fe-fed the swim with a cadpot attached full of meat after every bite but was getting pestered by small fish so cut out the feed until I had a carp, the problem I had was the carp seemed more interested in basking in the sun under the tree than having a feed so the roach and rudd were having a field day'.

I found by not moving the rig if I managed to get the bait to the bottom to wait, I could get a carp and of good size I had three in a row then fishery manager Paul Greenwood came by and asked how things were going and no sooner had I told him I had started to catch it went dead as far as the carp went! (There all Jinxed"). I cupped in another half a pot and tried my left hand swim, first put in and a foul hooked big fish came off after 5mins and despite trying this swim a few more times until the end of the match I never had a sign of a carp and nor did the lad to my left fishing back towards the pallet towards me, on the 6mt line all I had were some smaller skimmers and roach so I concentrated towards the tree on double 6mm meat ending the match with 8 carp and 18lb of silvers for a total of 79lb odd and second on are lake with the other end peg 66 winning the lake with 128lb, first on the day went to Lewis Greenwood king on Cary peg 98 with 182lb catching on the waggler and pellet and bomb with meat.

Full Results-

1st Lewis Greenwood-King peg 98 Cary, 182lb 5oz.

2nd Steve Tucker (Garbolino) peg 80 Cary, 173lb 14oz.

3rd Steve Denmead (Viaduct) peg 86 Cary, 151lb 3oz.

4th Dan Squires (Viaduct) peg 66 Lodge, 128lb 1oz.

Silvers-

1st  Roland Lucas (Viaduct) peg 100 Cary, 42lb 6oz.

2nd T.Davis (Unattached) peg 103 Cary, 36lb 2oz.