Well, what a rough night! It was quite calm when I went to bed, but at 4am the wind woke me sounding like a lorry driving through the wall! Thankfully, the weather was not as bad for us in Cambridge as many other parts of the country.
The wind seemed pretty much strait down the lake, so nowhere was going to escape it with the exception of peg 42, where it was pretty calm. My hand went in the bag and came out with 66, which is usually a decent year-round peg just on the end of the island. When I put my box down and sat for a minute I was quite pleased, as the lake kinks slightly back here, meaning the wind was for the most part rushing past me further across the lake.
I could comfortably plumb up to 10m (the occasional gust still affected me there, but for the most part it was okay), so I had a pole line here, and then one at 8m to my left (downwind) down the nearside slope using the same rig. Depth was about 5ft, and a .4gr NG Decker held stable here. This rig was finished off with a .14 hook-link and a size 16 B611, and matched to Preston 13h. Despite the wind, it was quite warm and I've found that carp do largely tend to feed in those conditions. To fish the island the 10ft Carbonactive Mini Carp came out, and my plan was to fish the bomb with either corn or bread in multiple grains/punches. I also soaked-up a few micro's to try a pellet cone if the fish needed some feed.
With very little to set up I was ready well before the off, and with the rain clouds long gone and the sun coming out it wasn't too bad. With the whistle I fed a few grains of hemp and corn at 10m, while the down wind line was fed more positively, with the idea that I'd not top it up and just see what happened. A grain of corn was hair-rigged and cast a meter or so short of the island where the depth was about 3ft, and I waited....
Two hours later I was still waiting! I'd topped the 10m line up with four grains of corn and a tiny pinch of hemp every half an hour, and I'd tried different multiples of corn and punched bread, exploring along the island and dropping down the shelf looking for signs. I hadn't seen one!
Odd carp had been caught - pegs 64, 48 and 44 I'd seen catch one each, so it was time to try the pole lines. With no sign on any of those I went back on the bomb. Cast dead in front of me and much tighter to the island in about 2ft of water I had a very slow deliberate liner. I left it, and it never developed. It was the only sign of a bite I had on the tip all day.
Out of desperation I got last weeks maggots out, and fishing them on the hook at 10m I winkled out a few roach to save the blank! I only really gave it twenty minutes or so before I switched back to corn, which got me a bonus 3oz roach as opposed to the twenty to the pound ones I was getting on maggot.
I never saw another sign of a carp in my swim all day, and was long packed up before the scales even started to weigh in! The two windward end pegs (pegs 53 and 62) were first and second on the day with a little over 24lb top, and just under 24lb second. There were a few low double figure weights and a few people like me that were carp-less and didn't weigh.
Next week is the fishery Fur and Feather, and typically the weather is looking on turning very cold by the end of next week. Hopefully we can just avoid a freeze-over (my ice breaker is ready mind), but beyond that I don't think we're going to get away with it. I know the weather forecasters often get it wrong, but it seems that when predicting an Arctic blast they don't!
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