Birkwood Open

The morning of the match broke extremely cold and frosty as my Uncle John picked me up the temperature in the car read -3.5 degrees at 7am it was going to be a grueller.
As we drove down to the lake we were greeted with a very frozen snake lake. In the distance you hear Chris's tractor driving down from the farm to smash the ice with his little "icebreaker"

Before the draw Roger said he was going to leave my dreaded peg 23 out and boy was i happy about that, so i went into the draw bag with renewed confidance. In goes my right hand and gave the disks a good swirl around until one stuck in my hand. Peg 32 graced my palm this week, just off 30 and 31 which had good weights off them the week before, i might be able to nick a few fish off it. On getting to my peg there was still plenty of ice around and needed breaking for me to fish the far side slope where the fish usually patrol.

This was my swim after i broke the ice with the ice breaker and a short rope. All i had do now was move it so i could fish it. After a while i had moved most of it to enable me to fish half way down the slope around a "good" 3ft. I was going to fish maggot,bread and corn and just fish single hookbaits to mug the odd fish that move out of the flyers. Tackle wise it was the usual stroft line in 0.12 diameter, Ackoo's Pellistix and Mustad wide gape match hook size 18 to white hydro. I had 3 swims to fish at different depths but i only had my 4 bites on one line (pictured below)

I ended up catching three carp one on maggot and two on bread punch dipped in Carp Vader Pineapple, i weighed in and was initially disappointed with 7lb 10oz, i only weighed in because a lot had packed up early and hoped it fished hard elsewhere.........it did. 24lb won it, 20lb was second and Uncle John was third with 8lb and i scraped last in the money. me and Uncle John share our winnings so went home happy and some beer tokens for the obligatory after match pint!

Whilst i was waiting for my 4 bites i did get a bit bored and saw some scurrying about in the reeds opposite so i cupped in a bit of corn and see if it would come onto the ice for it, hope you can see it.

Round 2 of the Winter League next week. Thanks for reading.