Right, I promised a friend I would blog for my winter league, so here it is! I can't promise that every update will be early, but I will do it for all five matches fortnightly from now on. I may even manage to fill the weeks in between too, if I can.
The weather was forecast to turn wet and windy after the draw, but thankfully lake one is quite sheltered. In terms of pegs, as long as I avoided the front of the lake (2-9 and 34-40) I wasn't too fussed. When peg 13 came out I was quite happy - it's normally a bit of a nursery peg, but bites are the name of the game really in the winter league!
As you can see from the pic, I had four rigs up - three for the far bank (two identical shallow rigs, but one with 11h lakky and one with 13h) both were finished with .12 hook-links and 16 B611's. I had a deep rig up too, with 4ft of water tight to the vegetation on the far bank. This was a .3gr Nick Gilbert Power Finesse, with a .12 hook-link to a size 18 Drennan Wide Gape Match, paired with 11h lakky. Last up was a roach rig and somewhere to drop on to if the wind got too much! I had a little over 6ft of water here (at 11m), and the rig was a .4gr Nick Gilbert Power Finesse. Hook was a size 20 Drennan Wide Gape on a .10 hook-link. Matched to original no8 Preston lakky, it was light enough for roach, but enough to give a fighting chance should a carp show there!
On the whistle I fed a pinch of hemp and caster on this line, before going across on the punch on the lighter lakky shallow rig. A few knocks showed there were some fish present before the float went away and a tiny roach was on the end! After a few missed bites I tried caster on the shallow rig and had a couple of slightly better roach (twelve-to-the-pound) before a few tiny fish muscled their way in.
As the rain started I went on the deck across and the first bite was from a better roach of about 3oz, before again the fish turned tiny. I decided to try a corn skin on the hook, and it had barely been in the water a minute before the float burried and the lift was met with lakky streaming out. The fish tore off to my left before coming off. That said, I'm sure it was foul-hooked.
Predictably it slowed the swim so I decided to have a drop on the roach line, after feeding four grains of corn across. It was slow to begin with, and I was just toying with leaving the line when the float slipped away. A slightly better roach was the result, and a three or four followed, including one about 4oz that needed the landing net!
As the line faded I topped it up with half-a-dozen casters and went back across on corn. I had a near instant bite which I missed, before a much slower and dithery bite bought me a 2oz roach on corn. No more bites led me to try caster, both on the deeper and shallower rigs but any bites were just tiny roach. I came back on the deeper line and had two reasonable roach before the rain got even heavier and the line seemed to die.
About two hours in and having had enough of the rain, I relented and put my brolly up! I hate sitting under the thing, but the trees were keeping the worst of the wind off and with bites hard to come by now (even on maggot) it was a bit of welcome shelter. Odd carp had been caught to my left, so increasingly I plugged away on corn hoping for a carp.
Eventually, with a little over two hours to go the float plinked under in the manner that you just know is a carp, and the lift was met with a sluggish chugging on the end as a 2lb common that looked as cold as me made a mistake! No more bites followed, so I topped up with four grains of corn and had a look on the roach line, but nowt was doing.
Back over on corn but I had no more more bites. I plugged away for about twenty minutes when the slightest movement about three feet to the left of my float caught my attention. Even as I write I'm not entirely sure it was a fish... Anyway, in for a penny and all that, I picked up the lighter shallow rig and baited it with a 9mm punch. I laid the rig in, the float cocked and then simply wasn't there! The lift saw the lakky stream out as carp number two made it's mistake. Again, a small one about 2lb, but a fish all the same!
The next three drops all did the same, except the last fish was about 4lb instead of 2lb. A change to the slightly heavier rig didn't make any difference (well, the fish don't know what lakky is on it!), but the 13h just helped me get the fish away from the brambles hanging in the water! The last part of the match went pretty smoothly and odd fish kept coming. I had a tiny area between two yellow brambles at 16m where if I could hold the rig nicely I got bites. I missed a few, and as tends to happen when I was on thirteen carp the next one came off - five minutes before the end. I did manage to get one more after, so I must not grumble! I had one mirror of about 4lb, while the others were all between 1lb 12oz and 3lb.
I guessed my fourteen carp would go around 40lb, which as it turned out was pretty accurate as they totalled 40lb 12oz. My bits went 1lb 14oz for a total of 42lb 10oz. A decent days fishing given the weather, and more so as it was good enough for first place(and my first win in three months!), with peg 20 having 25lb odd for second. A good start to the winter league, even if it'll probably take until the next round for my gear to dry out!
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