This was a Nomad match on the match pool, Campbell at Viaduct fishery down in Somerset. I’ve only fished this pool once before but I knew this pool has the potential to throw up big weights and definitely a match I’d been looking forward to on my trip down to Somerset for the Nomad Somerset spring festival.   

At the draw, kindly done by the fishery management, as they know the pegs I drew strangely, being the only person to draw with a choice of two pegs, 118 or 119. This is because this area was the bottom area of the pool. So my heart sank. It must be a crap area if I was getting a choice of two pegs I thought! 

On arrival 119 was right into the corner so I elected to fish 118 thinking if I was struggling I could still throw a bomb into the corner from 118. 119 looked the better peg to me. It had a nice bay to fish into on my left up against some brambles. 

The plan was to start on the bomb with a banded 8mm pellet. while I primed up a long pole line with 6mm pellets, plus a short meat line. So I began on the bomb and pellet throwing around the peg for an hour but I had no pull rounds, even though the angler opposite had caught a few on the straight lead. 

I tried the long pole line next with an 8mm hard pellet as hook bait and pinging in 6mm’s. This produced 4 or 5 carp in the next two hours but it wasn’t really producing enough and I was getting left behind in the match. 

3 hours in and it was time for that nice margin up against the brambles. I’d fed a big pot of 8mm meat at the start of the match and topped it up with another pot an hour later. I was thinking it might be a bit to early in the year for 8mm meat but knowing this waters recent form on social media I thought the gamble was worth it if a big bag of fish was on the cards. 

I waited 10 minutes for the first bite and then re fed via a kinder cup, very soon I was into my first margin munter, a carp round 4lb, quickly followed by a couple more carp around 3 to 4lb. This give me the confidence on this margin line and I stayed on this line for the rest of the match fishing 8mm cubes of meat. The Carp were a good size with a odd one going around 8-10lb in weight. One of these carp smashed my top kit while I was playing it. (something that has never happen to me in 20 plus years fishing but I still landed the carp with just 8 inches of top kit in my hand) 

I had a good run of fish, kinder potting in 8mm cubes of meat after every fish but then the carp seemed to go 20 minutes before the end of the match. Then a caught a nice Tench around 3lb in the last 5 minutes to finish of the match. 

On the all-out I had 96lb on my clicker plus a few silvers and I was hoping to have done the tonne and when at came to be weighed in I put 142lb 15oz on the scales!! (more clicker practise required) This was enough for 2nd in the match with 159lb winning the match. 

So this was a nice days fishing, I’d been looking forward to fishing Viaduct all winter and it didn’t disappoint. I’ve now fished this pool twice and done two tonne plus weights. I’m back there in September and I can’t wait!!