Something slightly different this weekend – our local Apollo Guildford match team have once again made it through to the semi-final of the Angling Times Supercup, the venue being the prolific Viaduct Fishery in Somerton, Somerset. As a result the guys have arranged a cheeky weekend away to get to know the place and kindly extended the invite to Bagger and myself – Glastonbury Travelodge here we come!!!
Spot the viaduct
Viaduct is not a fishery that I’ve visited before but I’d read a lot about it and a quick look online yielded loads of blogs and YouTube videos, the films showing Jonny Arthur catching just 18 fish for 252-11-0 to win a Fish’O’Mania qualifier and another showing Adam Wakelin beating Andy Power by an ounce (279-6-0 versus 279-5-0) to win a round of the UK championship making particularly good viewing.
Today’s match was to be held on Lodge Lake, a roughly triangular shaped pond with 20 pegs. There was an (inactive) aerator located in the middle of the lake but no central islands – as this isn’t the biggest lake in the world (and there are pegs along all three sides) it struck me as being mainly a pole venue, though there are a few pegs where you could probably cast a waggler or straight lead without infringing too much on your fellow anglers.
My draw saw me on peg 64, probably the furthest pitch from the tackle shop/carpark but apparently a good one as it is in a corner and features something called ‘The Monk’ – a concrete pillar about 5’ from the bank towards the corner to the right that is no doubt something to do with controlling water levels. As well as The Monk and the corner to my right I had a small bay between two trees on the opposite bank (diagonally to my right) and a vacant platform to my left. I had Luke Sheriff for company directly across on peg 66 – he had a nice gap between the bank and an overhanging tree to his left, but as we were pegged opposite each other in the narrowest part of the lake we effectively cancelled each other out in terms of being able to fish long into open water.
The Monk
Prior to the start of the match I settled on a three pronged attack and explicitly chose not to fish a certain area. The lines that I settled on were:
Bomb and pellet into the bay between two trees diagonally to my right. The rules at Viaduct preclude the use of method-type feeders and stipulate legering hooklengths of at least 12” so my set-up included either a 10 or 19g Guru square bomb free running to a 30cm hooklength of 0.17 to a size 14 QM1.
Paste at 5m. I was aiming for carp so this rig included black Hydro and 0.17 Guru N-Gauge straight through to a size 12 MWG.
The margin tight to bank to the side of the vacant platform to my left. Again I was only really looking to catch carp on this rig so I went with my heaviest margin set-up – red Hydro, a 0.3g SconeZone V6 and 0.19 Guru N-Gauge straight through to a size 12 MWG.
Rightly or wrongly I decided not to fish long into the corner to my right and I had 4 reasons for this:
Whilst setting-up I saw lots of fish move under the tree opposite, but saw no signs of fish in the corner.
As I was going to be fishing the straight lead diagonally to my right my view was that this would cut-off any fish that might’ve headed into the corner from open water.
When I’ve been fortunate enough to draw corner pegs in the past fishing the margin to the side away from the corner has been more productive.
Most importantly I didn’t want to break my pole! It seemed to me that if I fished long into the corner then any hooked fish would bolt along the far bank towards peg 66 potentially seeing a very expensive number 7 or number 8 section ‘interact’ with The Monk in a very negative fashion!!!
A map of the complex
To be perfectly frank I found the first 5 and a half hours of today’s match somewhat frustrating (summer open matches at Viaduct are normally 6 hour affairs fished from 11 until 5). The bomb line into the bay diagonally across to my right looked really fishy but seemed to be full of twigs and only produced three proper pulls from three fairly small carp. The paste line at 5m produced plenty of bites but these were generally from small silvers – this line did produce a tench and a couple of nice skimmers but I wasn’t really focussing on the silverfish prize so I soon sacked this off. My margin line tight to the bank to the side of the vacant platform to my left was equally underwhelming – I fed it quite positively with groundbait and dead red maggots but my double dendrabena hookbait only yielded two bites, the second of which went under the platform and around one of the legs transforming my 0.19 rig line into candy floss!!!
Looking left
Having to re-tie my margin rig actually prompted a change that at least boosted my tally from about 20lb to a total worth bothering the scalesman with – rather than fishing (as I normally do) tight to the bank I decided to try fishing right in front of the platform to my left. This put my float some 3 or 4’ from the bank (and hence could’ve been a nightmare with foul-hookers) but I was going nowhere and had nothing to lose! I also decided to switch to feeding corn and some of the new Ringers R6s pellets instead of groundbait. I’ve no way of telling if it was just the time of day, the change in fishing position or the different loose feed but in that last 30 minutes I caught twice as much as I did in the preceding 330!
On-site tackle shop
In the end the 7 or 8 carp caught in the final half an hour gave me a total of 60-4-0, nowhere near the frame but a small confidence boost going into tomorrow’s match on Campbell nonetheless. Well done to the top 5 overall:
No comments:
Post a Comment