Hi Folks, the day before this match was something of a logistical nightmare for Bob Baker who was running this match as he still wanted the match to go ahead but there were no where near enough pegs free of ice for the 40 odd blokes booked in, i told Stav of the situation and after a few phone calls with a bit of um'ing & arh'ing we decided to have a drive down to have a look at the situation for ourselves and if the worst came to the worst and the ice was too thick to break at least we would have had a ride out! When we got there and had a walk around the pools it didn't look very promising with thick ice on all the pools with just a few pegs fish-able with only thin breakable ice where the aerators had been put on in the days leading up to the match, after meeting up with Bob he started to count up the pegs available then Phil turned the aerators on to remove the cat ice from the few fish-able pegs and it looked like we might get a match after all if there was not a big turn out. After paying some pools money it was time to draw there was 24 brave ( if not slightly insane) blokes ready to do battle with with the ice before they could do battle with the fish it was still well below zero, i drew out peg 10 on laurel pool which meant nothing to me as i have only fished Wyatts twice before and Laugherne island once Stav drew on Laugherne ( the peg number escapes me 29 i think?). When i got to the peg it was right in a corner with the aerator right in-front of me not where i wanted to be as i have fished many a winter ice match at Woodlands view over the years and you normally need to be as far away from the aerators as poss and fish up against solid ice, i was also a bit miffed at not being able to fish long as the rope from the aerator was stopping me and so was the guy on peg 9 as if we had both fished 13m we would touching poles. I was not to despondent though as i could here a lot of ice breaking going on around the other pools at least my peg was free of ice due to the aerator so at least i had not got to sling my lump of steel & chain around before setting up, i think the pegging ended up something like 6 on laurel,10 on wyatts and 4 each on oak & laugherne island.
I won't bore you with rigs & bait as i was very limited to how far i could fish out so i set up just two rigs both with on 0.10 line one with a 20 to try a 4mm pellet and the other a 22 for pinkies, both rigs would do for both lines with were at 6m & 13m the long line was as far as i could go with the aerator rope both floats were 0.50gr floats for around 7 1/2- 8ft of water. I fed just 5-6 1mm micro pellets with 3-4 flouro pinkies on both lines now and then just to see if i could get a bite first of all, the guy next to Bob on the edge of the ice was first to catch a small roach and before long he had a few of them plus the odd skimmer. I think Bob had 2-3 fish before i had my first bite a 40z skimmer then a couple of small roach it was slow going but at least we had got off the mark, the guy next to Bob was catching the most while they were only small fish but he was quite busy. Bob's fish seemed to be slightly bigger than than mine and the guy's next to him due to fishing the maggot as apposed to the pinkie, i tried maggot and pinkie on both of my lines but could only get a bite on the pinkie at 13m my 6m line never showed a fish all day. After around 2-3 hours Stav came up the bank to steal some of my coffee and said that all of the other 3 pools were all dry with no one having a bite so at least we were catching, i think that at the time i had got 5-6 fish while he was emptying my flask i had another small roach he said it was making him feel bad seeing people catch and went back to his own pool to try and get a bite. The bites now stopped as i was getting trouble with floating cat ice and having to smash it up with the pole pot, Bob was catching a few better silvers still and the guy next to him was catching smaller fish when we all saw more elastic than normal coming from then end of Bob's pole the signal of a carp. Bob netted the carp which looked around 2-3lb from where i was sitting but the always look bigger on such a hard day, i couldn't get a bite on anything the guy to my left had 1 roach and the guy to my right managed 2, the guy 3 pegs up on my left up against the ice had got 1 skimmer with the last hour upon us. In the last hour i managed to hook and land a small 12oz carp and a small skimmer, Bob had another carp smaller than his first plus a few slivers, the guy to his right up against the ice had fished a good match catching small silvers all day, the guy to my left had 3 small carp and a skimmer in the last hour up against the ice. We new that no one on wyatts had a bite there was only a single roach caught on laugherne island and the guy's on oak had gone dry as well! All 6 of us on Laurel had caught so it was the pool to draw, the guy on my left with the 3 late carp was fist to weigh with 3lb odd mine went 2lb 6oz, Bob had done well with his 2 carp and silvers for a match winning 8lb odd and the guy to his right had 5lb odd of smaller silvers with no carp, the 2 guy's either side of me and the 1 roach on island pool all weighed 3oz so they were all joint 5th as 7 had caught out of the 24 that fished but it was bloody cold. We all got a tin of choc's to take home for our efforts on a cold day i was 4th 0ne out of the money but got a free 12 months subscription to match fishing magazine as there had been a few prizes donated, many thanks to Bob for organizing the match and well done for winning the match, many thanks to the staff at Cob House for trying the mission impossible to keep the pools clear.
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