Viaduct fishery

I decided to fish the Viaduct at Somerton. Ian Parsons and Steve Long have made an excellent coarse venue of these fomer trout lakes and a silver fish match on a Saturday
was very appealing . I considered having another go on the Isle but Saturday was far more convenient this weekend than Sunday. I am also aware than the likelihood of doing well was remote, it is not a case of being unduly pessimistic but there are some very good anglers who fish this venue regularly and they would be very hard to beat.
Arriving at the venue I at first thought I must have got the day wrong as there seemed to be very few people about. I was very dissapointed to learn that only
8 anglers were there, but with the weather looking reasonable I drew peg 81 on Cary lake. With so few fishing , pegs were left out , leaving generous room for everyone. I had sought the advice of Steve Kedge because he is in such good form this year and also a very genuine guy. Steve was of the opinion that fishing fairly short, line to hand was likely to be my best option and to also have a look at 13 metres.
On the whistle I cupped in 3 hens egg size balls of groundbait laced with a little hemp and caster and began loose feeding caster on the 3 metre line. 1/2 hour on the long pole
produced just a few small fish and a lot of problems with very small fish, even a switch to double caster did not stop the little blighters having a go on the drop . bulking the shot helped a bit but things were very slow. I then switched to the short line but with a very poor response I was concerned that all was not well even at this early stage and did not like the fact that there was no wind on the water because I was being sheltered
by the spit of land that extends around 20 metres into the lake. I kept feeding the 3 metre line, moving shot around, changing depth and varying my pattern of feeding but alas all I could muster were odd roach and rudd , after 1 1/2 hours of this I got the
distinct feeling that I really was going nowhere but such is my lack of recent experience
here I did not really know whether to change tack or keep faith in what I was doing.
2 1/2 hours in I did get a bonus tench of about 2 lbs but still no pattern of bites.
I added very little in the next hour except odd roach and a 1 lb perch, odd forays to the 13m line produced just odd small skimmers so I tried putting a section on the inside line and upping the feed rate, still very little response. a look on the 13m metre line did produce a 1 1/2 lb skimmer but I just could not string bites together. The remainder of the match just ebbed away and I was forced to accept that I had got it wrong on the day. A 2 lb skimmer on the whistle was nowhere near enough to get anywhere near and sure enough a paltry 10 lbs 14 oz was all I could muster putting me 6th out of 8 . Pretty dismal but c.est la vie . Nick Collins won with 23lbs 60z followed
by Dave Roper with 21 lbs 1 oz. Generally the venue had fished very well and I can only plead incompetence for my poor result. Must try harder!