I had to go and curse it didn't I? After starting last week saying I could get used to not breaking ice predictably this week the lakes were frozen again! The only saving grace was that the ice was only two or three millimeters thick and easily breakable.
The draw bag was also unkind to me this week, with my hand coming out of the bag with peg 64, a peg which hasn't produced a carp (if my memory is correct) since the Christmas match or just before! First job at the peg was clearing the ice, easily done at first using a long landing net handle specifically carried for such duties. With a weed cutter on the end of the near six meter handle the narrow peg was mostly done, with the pole used to break the little ice past that as it wasn't frozen right up to the island. After that it was time to put the brolly up because as much as I hate being under it if I'm going to sit with hardly a bite then at least it would keep the slushy snow off of me which was coming down in droves by then! The day then got worse as the pillock next to me decided that instead of clearing the ice with a pole like everyone else he'd use the boat, going out and rocking it and smashing the ice between us to smithereens. It stayed where it was for the time being....
With the ice clear the first area I plumbed up was down the track as this was the area I believed I'd catch best from (or have the best chances of catching from!) I had two lines at a 45 degree angles, both on the edge of the ice, one at 10m and the other at 11m, both just where it started to shallow up towards the island, being about an inch shallower than the deepest water I could find. Rig for here was a .3gr Preston Classic 10. The depth was about four and a half foot. Line was .125 to an 18 B611 with he lakky being a soft number 10 latex. The far bank of this peg is very shallow with erratic depth variations so I set a rig at 3ft and had a plumb around to see what I could find. Eventually I had two areas, one dead in front about a meter off the island, at about 12m and the other at 13.5m further down to the right, nearer to the island and with a few twigs overhanging, which I thought may just hold a fish or two. This rig was a 4x10 PB2 with the rest of the terminal gear the same as the other rig.
On the whistle I fed three of the four lines, leaving the most promising of the far bank lines until after I'd tried it. The left hand track line got just four maggots while the right hand line had three grains of corn. The island line in front got just six casters before I slipped a maggot on the far bank rig and went across. No joy here on either maggot, caster or corn led me to feed just three maggots on it and leave it, trying the other far bank line. I could already see that one angler in the open water had a fish, and could hear others saying about people catching so with the fed far bank line barren I went down the track. Trying both of these lines in rotation, and also dropping in along that line in between where I hadn't fed gave nothing, not even a roach which on the previous times I'd had the peg had always been there!
Just after the hour mark the wind picked up slightly and all the ice kindly smashed to pieces by the eejit further up started to drift in front of me and the next hour was fruitless as I just couldn't fish. The ice sheets were small so it was a case of trying to clear them as I could neither cut a hole or just shove them under the ice to my left. In the end I just gave up and sat on my box with a coffee and it was near an hour before I could fish again as the ice started to melt. I With no bite still coming however I decided to top up the maggot line in the track with four more maggots before trying the other three lines in turn. With nothing on those though I went back on to the maggot line in the deep. After about ten minutes the float slowly sank away and I lifted, expecting a tiny roach to be the culprit but I was wrong and what was almost certainly a foul hooked carp charged off to the right until I could follow it no further due to a dining table sized piece of ice floating up! Predictably it came off....
I have to admit although I'd lost it having had a sign had renewed my enthusiasm a bit, but five minutes on the same line gave no more signs of a fish so I topped it up with four more maggots and slipped a grain of corn on to try the other line. I doubt the float had been in for much more than a minute before a sharp dink saw me attached to decent fish and after a bit of a tussle a common of around 5lb was in the net. I had another five or so minutes on the line but nothing came of it so I gave it three more grains of corn and left it, but that was the last sign of a fish I was to have all day.
The sun stayed out and it got quite warm but I couldn't buy a sign of a fish, even with the ice gone allowing me to try much further down the peg well away from any feed, trying every bait I had on all the lines. I even got the pinkies out of my bait bag and tried them! In the last hour and a half I upped the feed, dripping half a dozen maggots every ten minutes over the maggot track line and dripping odd grains of corn over that line down the track. I'd largely given up on the far bank lines, giving them the odd try but they've never gone for me on that area of the lake before so I didn't expect them too then! I could see most the the anglers in the open water catching odd fish now yet nobody on the island was getting anything other than an odd tiny roach.
Normally with no points up for grabs I wouldn't have weighed my Billy-no-mates carp in but as I worked that hard for the bugger I did, giving me a total of 5lb 4oz. The match was won with just a few ounces over 20lb and with two 19lb weights and two high 17lb weights just 3lb or so separated the top five so while nobody bagged up it was fair for those lucky enough to be out there. Lets just hope that's where I can draw next week!
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