Trinty Waters, 31st December 2010

As I have been working all over Christmas, I was hopeful that a few others would fancy a day at Trinity, especially as the ice breakers could stay in the van. As it was there were six of us, so a decent little knock up, with £40 & £25 to fish for in the overall and a silver payout of £25.

I was pacing round my garage before I left, convinced I'd forgotten to put something in the van, but I walked round it half a dozen or more times and couldn't think what it could be...... until I got to Bridgwater, my dead maggots. So that was the plan down the pan before I started.

We had pegs 9-15 and peg 12 left out, I took the last card from the hat and opened it to reveal 15, not a bad draw, but on such a cold day, I'm not convinced the draw was crucial, all the pegs in can produce fish. Water temp was 2.5°C at the start and didn't vary all day.

I set up two rigs to fish at 12m, both Jean Desque wire stemmed floats, one standard, one with a hollow tip added to it. 0.9g and 0.13 to 0.11 and a 18 808 for the one with hollow tip and 0.75g 0.11 and a .08 flourocarbon hooklength and a 22 B611 on the standrd float rig. A margin rig on 0.15 and a 18B911 completed th pole set up. I did set up a straight lead, but it stayed on the bank and was put back into the holdall unused at the end.

I fed some softend 4mm, caster and micro at 12m on the whistle and waited half an hour for a bite, which was a small roach. Not much to tell about the day, it was hard work to keep the bites coming, alternating between soft pellet (couldn't catch on 4mm, but had some skimmers on 6mm) and maggot at 12m. The margins didn't produce, the peg died for 10 or 15 minutes after every bait top up, except when I just fed maggot, then I was plagued with microscopic Rudd.

I did chop a few worms and tried worm on the hook, but that was just a waste of time and worms, as the float didn't offer any indications of hungry fish when a worm was on the hook.

I could see Mike West on peg 13 and knew he had a couple of carp and a few silvers, I didn't have any carp, nor any sign of them, Andy Hembrow had also caught carp, to go with his silvers, along with Darren 'Noddy' 'Nuddy' Vowles who had two carp and a skimmer on the brain dead lead.

1) Andy Hembrow 21.14 peg 10
2) Mike West 12.14 peg 13
3) Chris Fox 9.07 peg 15
4) Darren Vowles 4.14 peg 9
5) Glen Calvert 4.01 peg 14
6) Dave Baker DNW peg 11

Silvers

1) Andy Hembrow 14.04
2) Chris Fox 9.07
3) Mike West 5.10