Viaduct Teams of Five Final Rd.

Traveling with Don Sutherland again today for the final round of the viaduct league and with 95 anglers involved there's a lot to fish for, We planned to grab a breakfast roll at the wooden spoon in Weston although as norm they had over slept or to many beers the night before? so we made are was to the globe for the draw and managed to get there in time for a full breakfast to help us through the day, We had team mate Sam Johnson draw for us today as Chris Hook hadn't been to clever for us to date, Back with the team draw card and Bingo' I had managed to draw on the overspill to spring lake peg 3 not that I didn't fancy match lake I just felt I had a few more options, Happy with my draw which gave me an island chuck for the carp on the straight lead and plenty of room for fishing the pole for the resident lakes skimmers as well as a tree in the water to my left which I planned to feed casters for the perch, for company today I Had Chris Davis for company on peg two and Andy Crooker from the welsh mob on peg 4 .

After setting up the bomb with hair rigged size 16 Drennan hook I had two rigs of the same set up for fishing the pole at fourteen and a half meters with 0.4g mick Wilkinson skimmer floats on 0.10-0.09 and an 18 Drennan silver fish hook coupled to Middy 6-8 Hi-Vis elastic. I have to make a point to mention this elastic as I've been using this for silvers now for the last few months and I rate I highly and to date I haven't lost hardly anything I've hooked' and being a solid elastic its only around £2.50 for 5mts".

At the all in a cupped in 5 balls of darkened ground bait with casters and a few floro pinkees in on the long pole swim and some loose casters at 2 o'clock at 13mts being the same depth, Last week there were some big skimmers caught in the area although today was very bright and warm unlike the rain from the previous week so I was unsure they would settle but wanted to put a good carpet down if they did.

Starting on the straight lead with punched 10mm meat with a motion less 20mins on the tip, To be honest I was struggling to reach the distance as I don't carry the leads some of these guys do" but with a bit more welly' I got the distance sorted and a switch to 3 discs of punched bread and had a skimmer first chuck of 2lb, nothing followed so I was itching to get on the pole with double caster, First put in and 3mins later and another 2lb skimmer was added before a smaller 10oz sample then nothing , this is were I had to make a decision as to re-feed the long pole line which I chose not to as im sure I still had enough feed in the area to graze over. Back on the lead and reaching the half way point I was having to make the choice for best as my rod was nearly wrenched in on popped up bread resulting in a nearly 9lb carp but another 30mins with nothing and two hours left I topped up the long pole with a small ball containing more casters and ten mins later went out over it with double caster and the results were instant with 3 nice size skimmers before things slowed down again, I felt they were happy to have a bit of feed so fed another ball'' of casters , a try down by the tree saw me have two small perch were I had been flicking casters by hand and a quick try back on the lead and bread leading to nothing made my mind up to concentrate on the long pole for the last hour.

I was soon finding a pattern of having a couple of fish before having to add another small ball and repeat the process leaving it to settle for 5mins and trying over the loose fed long line which only produced two small roach, I managed to catch steady for the last 30mins including two fish on my last two put ins I was gutted the all out sounded, match lake had fished really well and 90lb was top weight with good back ups so point wise I wasn't going to score well but would be interested  to see what my silvers would weigh and when they went just short of 27lb I thought I might get in the silvers frame and back at the results I was happy to find out I had second overall in the silvers picking up a nice £100 making a great finish to this popular league. owe and just to note I never lost a fish so the elastic must be a good choice".

Freeze Southwest Orange took the league title with an impressive 318pt and Fishery owner Steve Long was top individual, although as a team this year didn't get the best of results although I fully enjoyed the series and look forward to next year.

Full Results -

1st Martin Preston (Viaduct) peg 115 Cambell, 110lb 10oz

2nd Steve Nadlin (BVMG) peg 119 Cambell, 104lb 2oz

3rd John Moody (BVMG) peg 42 Match. 90lb 15oz

4th Clint Wojtyle (Avon Angling) peg 116 Cambell, 88lb 9oz

5th Andy Pritchard (Amigos) peg 123 Cambell, 72lb 1oz

Silvers -

1st Dan Squires (Viaduct Select) peg 16 Spring, 30lb 3oz

2nd Dominic Sullivan (Maver Cadbury Angling)  peg 3 Spring, 26lb 15oz

3rd Bela Bakos (Silverfox) peg 37 Middle, 26lb 4oz.