Bristol PSV Fishing Club: Viaduct, Match Lake, 22 Feb (12 pegs)

I'd love to go on for ages about how well this match fished but I won't because it didn't unfortunately.

No idea why really as the lake is stuffed with fish of all kinds including loads of F1's, usually reliable all year round, and plenty of carp up to double figures.

But winter has a habit of throwing a spanner in the works and it did just that today.

I was a bit surprised though when I looked out of the window to see a frozen fishing bus on the drive as the forecast was for wind and heavy rain all day, not to worry though as it wasn't long before it arrived in force.

No Derek again today so my travelling partner was trainee Match Secretary Will Dearlove (well he hasn't denied it yet), who kindly insisted on getting my breakfast at Shipham cafe .... And that was the hilight of our day (and Will only had a coffee)!

I drew the last ticket which gave me peg 50, an island chuck, and Paul in the shop reckoned it was one of the better draws.

Chuck (tight) to the island with maggot on the hook for F1s and carp and fish 13m for skimmers as it's usually a reliable peg for these on the pole line, happy days then!

The bait lineup consisted of last week's leftover maggots (executed in the freezer overnight), a pint of immaculate casters from Scott Tackle on Soundwell Road, Kingswood BS16 4QP

(Other tackle outlets are available)

A tin of meat, cut up and untouched and an unopened tin of Aldi's best corn.

No live maggots due to the inclement weather forecast and the fact that I keep my seat box and bait bag permanently in the back of the fishing bus and it's only 2 weeks old so I could do without the usual fly hatch problems.

For company on the bank today I had Ryan Radford on 51 and Psv chairman Mike Wilson (briefly) on 49 who threw in the very wet towel by 1 o clock.

Going around the corner was Steve O Toole on 48 who also surrendered early. Although he did have the full force of the weather straight in his face which is never pleasant when you can't get a bite for love nor money.

And next to Steve was Alan Healey, more on that later!

Due to spending too much time in the shop absorbing Paul Greenwood's fountain of knowledge I only had time to set up a small cage feeder three times

(1st plopped into the lake before I'd finished tying on a connector bead and the 2nd got "tree-d" on the first attempt to clip up) plus a 4x12 rig for 13m, or anywhere else, as the depth was around 2½ feet all over give or take a few inches.

After dropping a couple of balls of caster-loaded groundbait on two lines at 13m

I started off on the tip with 2 dead reds giving the hordes of hungry skimmers a chance to move in on the pole line.

But despite my pinpoint casting accuracy, apart from a tiny twitch, it never moved for an hour during which time Matt Challenger had snared a good skimmer on the tip and Mark Radford had managed an early carp on the pole.

Out on the 13m line then and the blank was avoided by a microscopic roach.

And that's how the next four hours continued, a fairly steady stream of weightless roach.

Further visits to the island were unrewarded apart from a liner that looked suspiciously like it had been caused by a passing duck but I was staying positive.

With an hour to go nobody appeared to be catching much and a few had either packed up or were wandering around looking wet and bored.

Alan Healey then proceeded to land a big carp fishing long down the edge immediately cancelling out my collection of fry.

Ryan also started catching across on the feeder with maggot, netting a couple of small F1's and carp.

With my collection of fry unlikely to trouble the silvers pool which was looking to be a race between Lee Waller and Matt Taynton, I was determined to rescue my pound from Alan and had a look down the edge to the right with double caster on the hook and started catching roach of a slightly better stamp (but still under 2oz) before the float slid away and plenty of elastic appeared.

I never found out what the culprit was though as it came off!
And that was as good as it got for me.

Alan's near-9lb carp together with his 3lbs of silvers was enough for first place followed by Mark Radford with a slightly smaller carp and the same weight of silvers.

The silvers pool itself was won comfortably by Matt Taynton with 7-12

So as I said at the start, it was not a match to remember other than that Chris Gay weighed in more than Steve O Toole and therefore won the knockout, which I (and everyone else except Chris Gay had completely forgotten about) so well done Chris!

Full Result: