Birkwood Winter League Match No1

It was the start of the Birkwood WL and the sunday morning broke and it was bloody freezing. The temp as we made our way down to the cafe was hovering around zero.
We dined on 3 slices of bacon, 2 slices of spam, black pudding, 1 egg, mushrooms, beans and toms. 2 slices of toast and coffee for the grand sum of £3.80. Bargain.

On leaving the cafe in noted the tempperature in my Uncle John's car and was reading +0.5 degrees....it was warming up. We entered the fishery and came past the large lake and it was ice free(minus 2 when we arrived) but the aerators had been on, what would our lake be like further down the complex with no aerators on it................FROZEN. Bloody typical first match and it's frozen solid. Anyway Chris (owner) came down in his tractor with a great big arm on the back of it and smash the daylights out of the ice, but how would it fish after that?

On the last 2 opens i have fished at Birkwood i have drawn peg 23 on Emily's, weights so far from it 10lb odd and a DNW. I was praying i didn't get 23 again even i wasn't that unlucky. The usual banter was exchanged at the draw, i even had a quid with Daz that i couldn't possibly draw 23 again. Uncle john has vast experience of match fishing and told me to hang around the draw bag until 23 came out then draw, did i listen, did i hell. Some how i ended up third or fourth to draw and the disc came out face down, i flipped it over and Roger Movely let out a huge laugh, i had pulled 23 out again.......gutted. Got the usual "fish have got fins" comments, but i was stunned.

Anyway i was going to be positive and after smashing some ice at 14.5mtrs it was time to set the rigs up.
Line was 0.10 stroft
Floats were ackoo's Pellistix and a pretson PB1.
Hooks were Mustad wide gape match (as07b) size 18 for the maggot rig and G pellet and paste for the other baits (4mm polar ice feed pellet and corn.)
Laccy's were white hydro and preston 9 hollo with an 11 hollo if i was catching well, all with pull bungs.

I had 4 rigs to plumb up. Bottom of the far and near shelf. One for half way up the shelf. and one for top of the shelf just of the far side sedges, i also put a PB1 up for poking into the gaps in the reeds on the far side with just a single hook bait. Some of these rigs were used to fish my margins as well.

At the start i started half way up the shelf without feeding any bait just a single maggot just to see if i could find any fish, after half hour without a bite i tried the top of the shelf rig....nothing. Bottom of the shelf nothing, rotated the baits, draggedthe baits about on the slopes and shelves for not a bloody bite. I went back on the half way up the shelf rig 3ft-4ft ish. I fed small amounts of maggots and after another half hour i needed some bovril i was frozen, turned round to pick my flask up still keeping my eye on the float it dipped very slightly and managed to lift in time to connect with a fish! I played this fish as though my life depended on it, managed to land it and it was barely hooked. Anyway tried the PB1 poking it into the holes in the reeds with various baits, the only bait i could get another bite on was maggot and they were 4 to the ounce roach.

At the weigh in Roger was winninng with 49lb odd in peg 18 and the weights tailed off up to me and recorded a massive 5lb, not bad eh.

Results can be found herehttp://www.birkwoodfisheries.co.uk/matches_and_results.php

Next match is in a fortnight anyone got the odds on me getting 23 AGAIN.

Thanks for reading, tight lines

Lee.