Trinty Waters, 19th January 2011

With the weather warming up and the water temps on the rise, I had high hopes for this Wednesday open on Woodland - until I got up and saw that the forecast 1°C overnight was down to -4.5°C on the journey down. At least the lake remained ice free and there were some small roach topping.

Peg 27 came out of the hat, so I immediately decided to fish for skimmers and see if an odd carp or two came along, as in the winter, the lodge bank pegs often find it hard to compete with the opposite bank, when the fish come into the margins. The lodge bank is in its first full winter since being remodelled by John and whilst the ledges he created during the remodelling were very productive last summer, they seem just too shallow to get the carp on them in this cold weather. Maybe next winter, with another years growth of reeds and mother nature shaping the ledges John made with the digger, the fish will be more comfortable to come up the ledge.

Anyway, those of us on the Lodge bank would have been frozen if the high bank was still in place, as it used to block out the sun - which made its margins colder than those opposite, so even before the work often its margins weren't so productive in cold spells.

I set up two rigs, a 1g Jean Desque with a hollow tip added, this was on 0.13 and a 0.09 hooklength and a 18 808, and a 1g Jolly on 0.11 and a 0.08 hooklength with a 20 gamma black. I initally only fed one line 14m and put in two jaffa's of groundbait, micro pellet and dead reds. First put in and the float settled, then buried, a spirited fight ensued, but the double 6 preston slip with a pulla bung saw me net a decent carp after 10 minutes, it took double dead red.

Next put in with a soft pellet saw another carp in the net and just before the first hour was up, a much smaller cyprinid joined its big brothers in the keepnet, my first carp since 18th November!!

As the hands of the watch passed into the second hour, there was some bubbles and activity in the peg, I lost two foul hookers and landed a couple of decent skimmers, then the wind got up, blowing across the lake from the far corner (6) towards the top corner (23), that killed off the sport for myself, Rich Coles on 29 (and I won't elaborate on the defamatory comments made about Rich, by Mr Rixon - who claims he's a silverfish hasbeen :-) ), Andy France on 26 and Paul Lock on 24, the last 3½ hours saw only odd fish, mainly small roach caught on this middle section of our bank, whilst we watched fish coming from the pegs opposite. My 3 carp went 17lb odd, with 5lb odd of silvers.

Pete Sivell took advantage of his end peg (6) with no one on the bottom bank (1-5) and put just shy of 60lb on the scales to win. Jason Radford had 14 & 16 empty either side of his draw on the culvert (15) and again made good use of that situation.

1) Pete Sivell 59.07 peg 6
2) Jason Radford 42.13 peg 15
3) Martin Lengahan 37.15 peg 17
4) Tony (lets leave the good pegs with plenty of room) Rixon 37.07 peg 19
5) Andy Curry 36.14 peg 23
6) Chris Fox 22.14 peg 27

Silvers
1) Leighton Palmer 15.14 peg 10
2) Steve Kedge 11.02 peg 13

Thats it for about three weeks now, no fishing, as I've had the carpal tunnel op on my left wrist this morning (Friday) (its a right pain in the arse typing this out one handed!!) although you may see me bank walking once I can drive, I get stir crazy in the house.