winter league

Well another weekend and another winter league match out of the way, thankfully there are only two left, because i am bored of them now. Summer is just around the corner and its bagging time , also time to renew my Leamington licence, in readiness for the reservoir , which excites me more this year than ever before. Any way too the winter league. John deservedly won the match with 9lb something but it was much more than this with all carp weighing 2lb. He had a couple of nice fish around the 6lb mark. Martin (the venue expert ) came 2nd and Keith to my left 3rd, i luckily and to my surprise won the section for the 2nd week running, i weighed 1lb11oz.



http://open.spotify.com/user/justicecsa1/playlist/6ooN4HQ1ilNSOoo9vPGyne

winter league

Well we are half way through the winter league and its not gone well.
To be honest its been a nightmare, with the fishing coming second to worry about work as the crunch takes its toll. Half the work force was slashed last week and some good freinds may never be seen again, it was an upsetting expierience and i do not think that will be the end of it, so understandingly i have my mind on other things and of course being on short time and losing over a third of my wage is also having an impact on my fishing, lets hope that a recovery is just around the corner. Meanwhile heres a great music site link to my early 80s electro , yes i was a breakdancer and loved to go to alldayers at the powerhouse to do my stuff.
http://open.spotify.com/user/justicecsa1/playlist/16rOq0KL5srjudcdebp1Dj

101 Carp and no ice in sight.

Another weekend , another fishing trip, well that's not true, had a day at Alcott farm Thursday , with John Paul and his uncle. We decided to come to Alcott, because john and wayne were fishing the open Saturday, i was not , i was meeting john t at Oakham. The day fishing was not to good and i weighed 6lb , mostly Roach with the odd small carp and john 7lb his uncle estimated 15lb.

Anyway back to yesterday. We arrived at the fishery about 8.00 and set up on the old pool to the right, and settled on the pegs where we broke the ice the first time, thankfully no hard work to be done this week, pheewww. I started on the liquidised bread again , using pinkie on the hook, john the waggler 2 rod lengths using red maggot hook bait. After an hour i had nine small Roach , it was slow , but john was baggin on the wag. I had fed a pellet line at 8 metres and decided on a change of tactic , target the carp, well the weather is starting to get warmer, time for the carp rigs to come out.

First put in on small pellet resulted in an instant bite and a nice 4oz Carp was soon in the net.The action was non stop from then on , john baggin Roach and me small Carp. In the end i made it to 101 Carp but as always, that last fish took ages to catch. John had easily 200 Roach with 2 Tench and a couple of Carp total weight 16lb 10oz , i ended up with 29lb 13oz, so a great day and with the summer slowly approaching, this year we should be into some good sport.

16lb 10 oz mostly Roach 101 small Carp for 29lb 13oz

Ice hole “ pt 2 “

Well it was cold again and yes, Oakham like everywhere else was frozen. We ended up at Oakham because the winter league match was called off, a burst pipe or something. Any way, i for one was secretly pleased, a chance to catch some fish.

Me and John met at 7.15am and had a pleasant drive to Oakham, it was nice because the sun was rising and it gave the impression it was going to be a nice day, eh wrong , well weather wise any way, it was bloody cold.

We fished the lake to the right , the same one as last week but different pegs , we fished the east bank , it would make a change , we already knew we would catch where we were last week, where would the challenge be then. John started with a small ball of groundbait, i decided on liquidised bread again , but fish red maggot instead of punch,  feeding pinkie. I started well and had about 10 Roach before John had his first fish. All was going well for me but a bit slower for John. John decided he wanted to fish to the island but with the ice it looked impossible, how would he break the ice at 9 metres. On went his pole cup and he began to tap the ice, breaking a small hole near the island, surely he was not going to fish it , he was. Over went his rig and he slowly lowered it into the 6 inch diameter hole and had a roach straight off, he played it then began to drag it over the ice, i thought it was hilarious , i had never seen anything like it, the next put in a carp, his no2 elastic stretched under the ice, he eventually got it tio the surface and struggled to drag it across the ice, this was not right , so he got his cupping kit and filled it with hot tea, trying to make a small channel to play the fish in, god it was so funny, but it worked and using is cup again tapped out a nice small channel. John began to fish the pellet and began to get the odd Carp, i was plodding along nicely with the Roach and the odd Carp.

  The day passed quickly and we both put a nice bag together, but with John feeling ill , i might have got a few more than him, alas he weighed a great 7lb to my 6lb, we still enjoyed it , even though the weather turned really cold.

My 6lb  = 102 Roach, 4 Carp          Johns 7lb mostly Carp.

Hole through the ice “ Eskimo style “

   Well its been a bad winter weather and fishing wise, not doing too well in the winter league,  struggled  on a few venues and fed up with this snow, but still , occasionally you get it right and you begin to love fishing again and this weekend was the case in question.

Got up at 6.30am and arranged top meet my mate john at 7.15, outside fisherman's friend . We got up to –3c and it didn't look good, even john, in fisherman's said “ There are always a couple of fools “ and it looked like he might be right. Even the drive to Oak ham our venue today was a bit treacherous, as my car slid on the black ice , which worried me, it felt like my tyre was flat.

We arrived at the lakes to a picture card winter scene, crisp snow  the sun breaking through and a frozen solid lake. Me and john grabbed a length of scaffold pole and began to break the ice , creating to fishable areas about 3 ft across and 7 ft long , just enough to give us a bit of depth, about 3.5ft to be exact. We then spent another half an hour netting the broken ice out of our swims, but at least we were nice and warm.

We both started on the punched bread and john had a fish straight away, it took a little longer for me to have one , i think john had 3 fish by my first, but we were catching.

John began to have a better stamp of fish on the red maggot over the liquidised bread, i gave pinkie a go as it was quicker to mount on the hook than punch, i to began to catch quicker. John gave me a few red maggot to try and it did seem to pick off the better Roach.

 

As always i wanted to give the Carp line ago so went over on pellet over micros, but was only having little dips on the float, i gave the water a tap with my pole and the float buried , carp on. This happened a couple of times, who would have thought summer tactics in the depth of winter. Anyway i took 4 carp on this line and all the while John was bagging some nice Roach. I eventually went back on the Roach line and began to catch again. All in all i had 5 Carp and 102 Roach for about 6lb John had a heavier bag of fish with some quality Roach ,not far of the pound mark , what a great day, i do not know why more people do not venture out in winter and even if a lake is iced over , depending on your choice of venue, you can still catch after all the disturbance of breaking the ice, I'm sure the fish respond to the commotion.

2 holes in the ice                                       Johns near 7lb bag

Just over 6lb i think.

My Favourite venue “ Snitterfield reservoir”

Here is a collection of pictures from Snitterfield reservoir

 

13.5lb mirror on the candle                    The rest of the bag

A nice silver bag for John        A double figure bag of Crucian

A early spring bag

The Avon at Wasperton

  

Well the weather is still cold and the fishing is still dire, well for me anyway. Me and John had a trip to the Leamington AA  stretch of the Avon at Wasperton and settled for two swims nearest the car park. The opening bet was waggler and maggot but after 2 hours nothing was happening . John had already tried the maggot feeder but too no avail. I decided to give the mashed bread feeder a go and with a tasty looking rubbish raft to my left, i was confident. No fish on that either. After making a fool of my self and casting the feeder right over a branch as two anglers stopped to chat, i gave up.

John had moved to my left where he found some slack water and using his pole took two small fish, i decided to poach and john was a good sport and let me , i had 3 small fish in all , john five, so we did not blank and all the Pikers had no action at all. Role on the summer and here are a few pics to remind me i can catch fish

1 33lb of Bream and Crucians Snitterfield reservoir

2 36lb skimmers jubilee pool

3 14lb on the bowl in December

4  A good bag of fish from silver pool Arden fishery in winter