After looking at the weather forecast last week I elected to have the weekend off match fishing, though I did go pike fishing on the Saturday, but didn't have a run! This Sunday was meant to be the first round of the individual Winter League but it was postponed due to the weather and it will start in a fortnight at round 2. The bitterly cold weather had continued all week, and we even had a dusting of snow Saturday night while the Saturday daytime temperature had hit a heady high of -2 degrees!
With the bad weather a poor turnout was usual and of the six pegs in the one I didn't want was peg 70, the furthest one away and one that hadn't been broken recently so the ice was thickest! No need to tell you where I got! My 7lb ice breaker struggled so the boat and a scaffold pole were needed to make a hole and that was hard work! I could only fish about 12ft from the bank and about the same to my left past a very few straggly reed stems in the water. Given that very few carp were liable to be caught, and probably only in the reed pegs (71-74) I put up the lightest gear I had with me in the hope of catching anything ( I wasn't that confident either!) Given the small amount of water I had to fish one rig would do me to fish on the edge of the straggly reeds and on the edge of the ice infront, depth of around 4ft in both. Not exactly light gear the rig, being a 4x12 DC11 float (I'd changed the tip to plastic), with .12 line to a .10 bottom, an 18 B611 and a Preston 9h elastic, to give me half a chance at gettin a carp out should I hook one.
At the whistle I put 4 casters in on the edge of the ice then dropped in on the margin line with a red maggot without feeding. After 10 biteless minites I dripped 2 maggots in over the float, almost instantly the float burried and I missed it! I somehow thought it would be the only bite of the day! Fortunatly it wasn't and 5 minites later I had another bite and swung in a roach of about 1/4oz!
There's not really alot more to say as roach under an ounce were all I caught all day, around 60 of them for 1lb 1oz and 4th, 3oz behind 3rd. 1lb 15oz was second and 2lb 7oz won, all tiny roach as those anglers in the reeds somehow managed to not catch a carp! I found bites came quickest fishing around 6in off the bottom, and that I didn't need to feed. Red maggot got bites far quicker than white and bread punch, no matter how small just gave missed bites. I have to admit that I spent a fair amount of time on caster looking to catch some bigger fish, I'm not adverse to an odd bit of silvers fishing, but those were just a bit small for my liking! Still, the sun shone and as I was sat out of the wind I really quite enjoyed being out, with the temperature near double figures. It's going to take a few days of that to melt the ice it's that thick! Hopefully next weekend it'll be back to normall!
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