Winter League Round 1

First I'll apologise for there being no picture of the peg, for some reason when I was transferring it to my computer it deleted the pic! I swear I never touched anything to do with delete!

It wasn't an inspiring morning to get up, the wind was howling and the rain was lashing against the window although the weather was forecast to pick up through the day, but as lake one is pretty sheltered there was a good chance that most of the lake would be out of the wind. At the draw most people wanted to draw in the 20's but with a few pegs in that aren't normally used nobody really knew how the lake would fish, as the rain was cold and a hard frost on the Wednesday before had partially frozen the lake for the day so the water was still very cold. I was happy enough going into the draw bag as peg 35 had gone (it's the worst peg on the lake, and I bet I'll draw it next match now!) and was even happier when I found peg 27 in my hand, the right area but a peg that is seldom fished as it's rather wide, but it's a bay in the island that looks like it would hold fish.

I was happy putting my box down on the peg as it was sheltered from the wind. After getting every pole section out of the rod holdall I could just get to where I wanted on the island using a short elbow section up the 17.5m extension of my Superlegion, although I was using a short 4. The swim was about four and a half feet deep on the ledge and the deck rig was a 4x14 Preston Chianti on .125 line to a 16B611. I've found that these swims as they don't have and features tend to get fish cruising through (the far bank looks the same as when I drew peg 31 back in early November if you want to check the pic, just further away!) so I put up a rig to fish shallow for cruising fish. This was set about a foot off the bottom and used a 4x10 PB2 float with the same hook and line as the other rig and both were on a Preston 13h elastic. Lastly I put up a margin rig as I've caught odd fish down the side here on the odd times I've drawn that bank, even when it's cold. It was basically the same rig as for fishing the deck across as it was very nearly the same depth. The only difference was it was on .14 line and a soft 14 latex. I also set up a strait lead in case the wind picked up.

At the whistle I only fed down the edge with a pinch of casters and a few grains of corn before baiting up with double red maggot on the deck rig and going across. After 7-8 mins I struck at a twitch on the float and come up with a stick about four foot long! No more indications after 10 mins so I cupped in about 10 casters. Just as I was doing this the angler on 25 (it was pegged every other peg) hooked a fish. I thought he landed it but I found out at the end he lost it at the net. After about 15 mins of trying various baits I was sure I started to get odd knocks, nothing hittable but it was hard to be certain as the rain was so heavy! One definite liner after 45mins led me to put the shallow rig on with a single caster. The rig had barely been out when the float went and I was attached to a fish. After an arm aching few seconds of getting such a long pole back onto the rollers I was down to the top kit then a min or so later a common nudging 3lb was in the net. Back out on the same rig and maybe five minutes later a nudge on the float was followed by a proper bite and a dumpy 2lb mirror found it's way to the net. Next drop and a lot of nudeges led me to bring the pole back and shallow the rig up a bit, the float had only just settled when it buried again and a couple of minutes later a common of about 5lb was in the net.

The speed of the bite when shallowing up after the liners led me to get up and put up a shallower rig, same terminal gear as the other rigs for across but with a 4x8 Preston Black float set at just under 3ft deep. With fewer indications on the shallower rig after ten minutes I was just about to go back on the deeper rig another bite gave me another common of about 3lb. Back out again on the new rig and a quick bite gives me fish number five, but as I was playing it someone walked behind me (it's a high bank behind too) Going back out there was no more indications so after a few minutes I put the deeper rig back on. Odd indications started again and just after I hooked carp number six the same idiot walked back passed me again. That spelled the start of a very slow spell and the next hour and a half went by without any indication at all, no matter what I tried.

Going into the last two hours odd liners started again but no proper bites so I tried the margin swim for the second time. With no indications I twitched the rig and the float buried but I missed it clean as a whistle! I was on maggot so it may have been a small fish. No more bites followed so I went back across. The deeper shallow rig produced odd indications but not the shallow rig. A bite out of the blue saw me hooked into what felt a bit larger but the fish came off after 30 seconds or so, I'm not sure if it was foul hooked though. I wondered if the fish were nearer the depth of my shallowest rig but spooking from the pole so I shallowed up my deeper rig giving me more line above the float. The response was instant and the biggest fish of the day at around 6lb justified the change, but was also the only bite for a while.

Going into the last hour I gave the margin another go but was again bite less. Back across gave no bites on the shallowest rig but odd indications"deep shallow" led me to stick with the rig set with a longer line. Half an hour and the float goes again and other fish of around 6lb was in the net, very easily as it rolled over the line and came in across the top like a wet sack! Ten mins later and another bite gave me what was the smallest fish of the day at about 2lb, which was also the last fish as despite a flurry of liners in the last few mins I couldn't make it a nice round 10 carp!

Before the weigh in many people had only one carp and the most anyone was admitting to was six so it was looking good, it even stopped raining, not that it made any difference as everything was (and still is) absolutely soaked! When the scales got to me top weight was 15lb odd and my nine carp comfortably beat what finished second as they went 35lb 12oz. A good start but there are five more matches to go, dropping the worst result. One thing I will have to bare in mind was the response to fishing with a longer line as I'm perhaps guilty of trying to fish as short as I can. Not only the bites that it bought but it was also that the two biggest fish fell to it. That may have been a coincidence but it's something I'll have to keep in mind.

I think the next two weeks are just opens before round two which is on lake two. I'll keep you updated how I get on.

It's Gotta Be Better Than Last Week....

Well, all the ice has gone so hopefully we'll be able to catch a few fish now, well, that was the plan. With the Winter League starting next week the turnout was a bit better than of recent so some pegs around the island were in which have been left out in recent weeks. I was reasonably happy with my draw, peg 44. It's perhaps not the best cold weather peg but with the peg opposite not in and with someone on the next peg who wasn't going to fill it in on the next peg I fancied it for a fish or two.

Main plan was to start on the lead away from the small island while feeding two pole swims as I've found the pole is a slow starter on this peg in the past. My first pole swim was at 13m towards the small island, not too close to it as the bottom is a bit up and down and the water was a little clearer after the lake has been frozen. Depth was about 4ft here. The rig for this was a .3gr DC6 to an 18 hook on .12 line. At about 8m I put a rig up to fish toward where the big lilly bed is in the summer, although dragging the plummet around I couldn't find any remains of it! Rig for here was on the same line as the other, but with a larger size 16 hook as I intended to fish corn here. Float was a more stable DC11 in just over 5ft of water here. Lakky on both was a 13h. As per usual with the bomb I had loads of different length hook lengths to try with both bread and corn. I did intend to try a tea-bag on it if the lead didn't work but I forgot to pick up my PVA from my carp bucket!

At the whistle the farthest line was fed with four maggots and four casters while the deeper line had a small pinch of casters and three grains of corn. The first few chucks on the lead and bread were fruitless, as was the third chuck on corn. The pole proved just as lifeless but it was the same for everyone until two people lost carp shortly after. On the hour and a half mark I struck at what I thought was a twitch and missed it, cursing out loud as I did saying I bet it was my only bite, and guess what? It was!

To cut a long and boring story short nothing worked and I blanked like seven of the thirteen anglers on the lake! I couldn't even get one of last weeks micro roach which I would have gone for if I had any marginal cover. Only one angler had a carp in the open water part of the lake, one of the two in the reeds had a carp (the other blanked, even though there were fish in the reeds) and the match was won with two carp for 8-12 and only five carp in total were caught. Fair to say the weather has knocked it on the head then! There were anglers on the other lake practising for a Supercup match and they all caught I believe so the first round of the Winter League has been changed to Lake 1, as it originally would have been last week had it not been froze off! I'll tell you about it next week!

Oh To Be An Eskimo!

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!