Viaduct Saturday Open (Cary Lake).

What a joy to wake up to what looked like being a really pleasant day weather wise with the sun out already, Arriving early as normal it gave owner Steve chance to rack his brains as to how I can get the end of my broken number 8 section out the end of my perfectly good no.7, Now I've had this stuck for around 3mths & tried allsorts from frozen peas to using the wife's hairdryer (Wouldn't be mine would it!") but nothing worked, Steve managed to find a section which fitted into the broken bit & with another chap & myself on each end & Steve in the middle with his rolling effect' He had it apart in two minutes!" Legend.. Lol.

Seventeen of us fishing today & after a walk around before hand there appeared to be a lot of fish on the spit back around pegs 74 & 77,78 so hoped to draw here for a change, I let a few go before me before taking my turn & couldn't believe it when I drew peg 102 which I was on a in the last match here a couple of weeks ago" I found it hard going that day for carp & finished with just under 70lb catching a few on the long pole with meat, I would try this again & if it didn't work would switch to fishing hard pellets long so set up a 0.2g rig on 0.17-0.15 & a 16 hair rigged hook, I would also use the rig to fish short around 8mts with meat. I set up a rig on the same lines to fish shallow if need be & apart from this just got out the normal bomb rod & waggler to fish out in the lake, I was going to have a rig to fish infront of peg 103 until a chap I hadn't met before (Chris Kitchin) turned up to fish it! It turned out he was on route to Whiteacres for the next festival & had stopped off on the way through for the match.

I started the day short on the meat but after 15mins switched to the waggler & banded pellet on the deck to start with towards to middle of the lake, I gave it 30mins or so but couldn't get signs on or off the deck, Already things weren't going to plan, Onto the long pole with 8mm meat at 16mts where I had been pinging the odd cube, I missed a couple off bites before eventually found the culprits to be small skimmers & did catch one around the 1lb mark which got me off the mark after two hours", Onto the bomb & pellet but this failed to produce a bite but I did have a decent fish around 14lb casting off to my right on meat feeding just a few cubes over the top but it was a one off, Around mid match a few fish appeared near the surface further out in the lake where I had continued to ping a few hard 8mm pellets so switched to the wager again this time fishing shallow, I had a carp around 7lb straight away then lost another near the net minutes later then couldn't get a sign' Chris next to me had faired a bit better after having a few early good fish on the long pole but now like me was searching for fish, This was hard work.

I was hoping things would get better going into the last couple of hours but it didn't really as I managed another carp on the wagg shallow & just two more carp on the long pole with banded 8mm pellet after switching from meat here to feeding just a couple of pellets at a time over the top. It appeared that the fish wanted to be in a bit of ripple on the water again today to feed more confidently which we struggled to have, Next door he had a few more late carp on the long pole after Ginge" on peg 105 called it a day & packed up early. I think I got it wrong again today & perhaps should of concentrated on catching shallow on the long pole but not so sure that would have worked as the pegs either side of me tried but failed to catch on it.

Back at the results & Roland Lucas had another good day catching on the long pole & pellet Shallow from peg 85 to finish with 175lb to win the day so well done to him ahead of John Mills on the opposite bank from us peg 78 next to the tree who finished with 148lb odd, The silvers was won by Nigel Bartlett from peg 88 with a small fish net going 26lb odd.

In hindsight I should of maybe targeted silvers again today as I didn't really expect to have enough carp to compete with some pegs but that's fishing & at least I gave it a try, My 45lb odd wasn't going to get me anything today but there's always tomorrow'. Truly thankful to Steve for getting my section free which got the day off to a good start, We did have some down pours of rain after the first hour but it cleared into a cracking warm day.

Full results -

1st Roland Lucas (Wiltshire Angling) peg 85, 175lb 6oz.

2nd John Mills (Bait-Tech Viaduct) Peg 78, 143lb 7oz.

3rd Jamie Bowden (Unknown) peg 94, 126lb 3oz.

4th Steve Denmead (Keyford) peg 96, 97lb 2oz.

Silvers -

1st Nigel Bartlett (Bait-Tech Viaduct) peg 88, 26lb 13oz.

2nd Mark Hannon (Summerhayes) peg 74, 17lb 9oz.