Bristol PSV Fishing Club: Viaduct, Campbell, 09 August (13 pegs)

First stop today, as usual, was Lilypool cafe at Shipham but unfortunately there was no view of the Mendips today as she must have been having a day off.
On the plus side?? Tony Rixon and a few of his apprentices were present on their way to the last of his Short pole series matches at Trinity.
I mentioned in the cafe that I'd be happy to draw anywhere on Campbell as long as it wasn't 110 as it's a bit of a tug-of-war peg and I know that there is a tiny crack in one of my pole sections (no 7 I think) which doesn't aspire confidence [that's not a spelling mistake]!
I arrived at the draw with a few minutes to spare and Will had everything well under control, looking very efficient sat at a table outside the shop with coffee tin and draw sheet at the ready.
I waited until the last 2 pegs and pulled out ... 110, but then it is a corner peg so was inevitable really (why do I always seem to get banished to corners)?
Anyway, it was the shortest walk on the lake so that was a bonus and the aereator has been running 24-7 of late and apparently this meant there would be a lot of fish down this end of the lake.
For company today I had Mark Radford on 112 and across on 131 & 132 was Chris Szakacs although with the aereator running and fishing down to the corner with my back to the rest of the lake I was expecting be having a "Billy no-mates" day.

By the time I had set up a couple of shallow rigs and a deep rig for banded pellet plus another for meat I'd run out of time so no rods were set up.
I fed a couple of spots at 6m with meat and pellet and pinged a few 6's down to the edge of the brambles and by the time I had achieved all this Mark was netting his second fish from chucking a lead towards the aereator which had me thinking maybe I should dig out the lead rod but instead I went down towards the corner at 14m and maybe 5m away from the brambles with an 8mm banded pellet and caught straight away on the shallow rig.
A good run followed and I caught small carp fairly regularly from then on, swapping between the deep and shallow rigs and after about 90 minutes I reckoned on around 50lb and started on my second net.
Chris had caught some on the lead but was well behind and Mark, after his flying start, had slowed especially since he'd had to take time out to visit the shop for first aid after harpooning his finger with an angry pole float ....
I heard the scream, saw blood dripping and looked the other way as I'm not good with serious injuries!

The middle part of the match continued as before although maybe not as hectic as earlier and I was suffering foul-hooking problems, one of which made it into the brambles and destroyed the shallow rig and the elastic, but at least the pole held out even though it was bending into some alarming shapes at times.
Heading towards the last hour I had a first look on the 6m meat line and after a couple of missed bites I landed my biggest fish of the day, near 10lb, which broke my landing net (bugger) and took my second net, guestimated, up towards the limit so this meant as I'd only brought 3 nets I had to chuck back my three skimmers and start a third.
I spent the last hour and a bit on the 6m line with meat but it was a very frustrating hour as I kept missing bites and losing foul-hookers while everyone around me seemed to be landing fish. Chris opposite especially so, and he was netting some big fish from down the margins which was worrying and I reckoned he had caught me up coming up towards the end.
I only managed to land one more in that last hour, I'm blaming it on Aldi's bacon grill which doesn't seem to sink very well (that's my excuse anyway)

Chris was first to weigh in and he put 114-1 on the scales which I reckoned had me beat (he thought otherwise).
That weight was topped by Steve o'Toole on 118 with 121-8 and I was pretty sure I never had that and I was right as my nets went 119-4 for second and left me wondering whether those three skimmers would have made 2 and a bit pounds but then Steve had gone over by a couple of pounds on one of his nets so I can't complain.
And it was a good, close match again with 10lb separating the top 6

Full Result: