Well, the New Year has started the same as the old one, that is cold! Oh, and with a lot of ice! I can't be the only one who's fed up with it...
With a surprisingly good turn out and more than one ice breaker present (plus the boat and some weed rakes) the required number of swims were cleared super quick and the draw was only a few minutes late! I fancied the pegs anywhere in the open water (67-72 were the ones in) so with due aplomb my hand came out of the bag with peg 62! Yes, I've finally managed to draw it, but typically weeks after I'd have wanted to, and weeks after a carp was last caught in a match!
Plonking my box down and my first task was to clear the ice again, as it had only been smashed and it was starting to freeze up again. Drawing the peg put me in a bit of a dilemma as last week the island pegs had not produced anywhere near the numbers of roach as the other pegs, plus they had shown late. The corner, with a few stick up's in it had the morning sun into it and the peg had been (up until the freeze up) THE peg for carp (which is why I drew it for the first time in two and a half years fishing at the venue, when no carp have been showing!) So I decided to have a gamble and put a rig up for carp next to the stick ups, while feeding a near roach swim as last week. The carp rig was on .12 to an 18 hook and grey hydro - not too heavy but I'd imagine any carp hooked would be very sluggish. This rig had a small 4x10 float in just over 3ft of water. The roach rig was the same as last week but with a lighter lakky (lesson learned!) chancing trying doubled elastic again, with a double 5 hopefully soft enough not to bump any better silvers but give a fighting chance with any carp.
On the whistle I fed three casters, the same of maggots and a tiny pinch of hemp on the 4m roach line before trying the longer margin line (I decided not to break across) at 7m with bread punch not feeding. I decided to leave the roach line till I saw other people start catching off theirs.
To cut a long story short (four hours and forty minutes shorter to be precise, I packed up a bit early!) I never had a bite. The two pegs to my right never had a bite either and I only saw four tiny roach caught all day with three of the five people I could see blanking. I spent the majority of the day on the carp rig, mostly on maggot but for what it was worth I may as well have been fishing on a 20mm boilie. Even with the sun in the corner my peg was freezing up all day and while the corner looked like it could produce a fish I don't really think I was ever in any danger of doing so!
So, the New Year hardly started with a bang but I did get to enjoy Man U getting dumped out of the FA Cup by Leeds which provided some amusement, and as the sun was dropping, along with the temperature I packed up at the final whistle as I was fed up with clearing the ice every five minutes. As I thought the open water pegs caught roach with 3lb 11oz winning, and while nobody had any decent fish they had a lot of bites with the winner having 150 odd fish!
I have to say I'm rather fed up of the weather now and am contemplating waiting until the weather picks up a bit now, which looking at the long range weather forecast may not be for a while.... I'll let you know what I decide next week!
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