Sunday 25th September 2016 - Viaduct Cary Lake

It had been about 2 months since I'd had an outing with the HLS crowd and so I was keen to find out how they all are. 20 of them turned up on a sunny morning with a light SW wind with a forecast of showers later.

On arrival I found that Chairman Bob had grow some fungus on his face and now known as Bob the Badger. He had brought George's younger and slim 'brother', but he still moans a lot.
I had come with the definite intention of fishing for silvers and so left all my rods at home. The draw happened at some random time when everyone had turned up and I pulled out 94, a nice peg for silvers. For immediate company, I had Mike Davies on peg 96 and across there was Steve King, Mike Bendell, Paul Bowyer, Eric Searle. I couldn't quite see Roge Coombes on 85 but knew it was him from the casting!!

I knew well that the margin to the right held lots of small skimmers and so did the lily pads to my left. I also chose a 5m line in front of me. All lines were about 3 feet deep and I only needed 2 rigs. Bait for the day was 4mm expanders with a little strawberry flavour, caster, corn, worm and maggot. The whole 6 hours was a constant flow of 3oz skimmers, a few roach and 3 larger skimmers. 3 carp did muscle in on the action with 2 being landed although one of the lumps broke my landing net head. That's today's repair job!! Although I didn't amass a big weight (34lb 10oz) it was a non stop day of fishing.
From my position, I could only tell what was happening on the opposite bank and it seemed that whenever I looked up, there was a bend in the rods of Bowyer and Searle. Roge Coombs was making a lot of slashing so I knew he was doing well too. Steve King was grumpy that although he caught 100lb 1oz, he only had 10 bites. Steve did give me commentary of how George was doing on peg 105 and that he was pulling out a whitebait every 10 secs. No wonder he's lost weight fishing that fast.
At the end, it was the trio of Coombes, Searle and Bowyer who took top honours with Eric taking top spot of 131lb 14oz. And, of course, George 'the robot' Fletcher took top silvers with 25lb 11oz. He said to me after that he had been counting the fish but lost count when he got to 400! I was surprised he could count that far.

Until next time, tight lines. Also, a message from the Chairman that he wants your money, £10, for the Xmas match, 18th Dec on Emerald ponds.