18/12/11 - Cuckoos Rest

Weight – 2lb 3oz
Catch – 48 Roach, 2 Skimmers, 2 Perch
Weather – Cold, mostly sunny. Cold breeze.
Water Temp – 5.3c – 5.4c
Match – Wests Tackle Christmas Open – 9th out of 20

This match was always going to be tough with heavy overnight frost, which covered ½ the lake with ice. With 20 booked in space would also be at a premium, so I was more than happy to draw the end peg at the top of the island on the right side, plus there was no ice to break.

As well as setting up 2 lead rods, 1x in case there was some carp about and another was a 10ft wand for scratching for bites, I was originally only going to set up 2 pole rigs, 1x 0.4g Jean François and a thin wire stem float shotted shirt button, both with 0.08 bottom and 22 hook. However, when plumbing around most of the swim was 4ft, except for a 6ft deep hole at 15m to my left towards the end bank, so a 3rd rig was required which was a 0.6g Jean Francois.

The first 15mins of the match was spent fishing the lead and bread in the “hole”, hoping for the rod to be pulled off the rest, but didn’t even have a liner. A switch to the 13m line didn’t produce, in fact my first fish came at 6m on punch bread after 45mins. For the next hour I had another 26, all be it very small, before that line dried up.

The remainder of the match was spent swapping between my 13m line and fishing in the hole, but I couldn’t get any decent fish. Of the anglers around me I thought I was doing OK, which actually gave me a false impression.

With approximately 20mins left the eventual winner caught 5 big skimmers to add to his handful of roach to steal the match with 13lb. 2nd place was only 5lb 4oz, with 4lb 9oz needed for 3rd. Most weights were made up of roach, with the odd better fish, so the frost had done its job.

A number of the anglers I was fishing against today fish a lot of canals and rivers which showed today. Some were using 0.06 bottoms to get fish. I don’t even own 0.06 and that experience probably counted against me. I should have spent more time fishing shorter, however on the flip side the fish I was catching short were very small and I was sure I would at some point pick up a better fish by fishing longer, which didn’t happen.