At last, a day with no wind! But it was damn cold!
This was to be only my 3rd match on the Top Pond so I wasn't too bothered about drawing any specific area, as I don't really know what area holds the fish at this time of year. I pull P5 which I don't fancy much as it's at the start of the top bend which is the shallow end of the pond, but who knows….I've been drawn with James 'Woody' Woodrow to my left with Neil Champman to my right.
Surprisingly, there was no ice this morning, so the all-in is called bang on time at 10:30. I have decided, based on my last match on this water, to fish on the far shelf and for the first 2 hours it works perfectly, with bites coming fairly regularly, if a bit slowly. And no F1s! All the fish are Common and Mirror carp which means the bites have been pretty positive.
Woody has caught at the same sort of pace, but to his left, Stuart Dalgleish is catching at a fast pace, and looks like he will be hard to beat.
I've become used to the fish switching off at some point, and around 12:30, it happened, not just for me but for everyone I could see, except Stuart.
So for the next couple of biteless hours I try every bait in my box at various points on the far shelf, at the bottom of the shelf and down the track (the middle). But they just seem to have stopped feeding.
To my left Woody has managed to find a spot that seems solid with fish and it catching really quickly - I reckon he took around 18lbs in the last hour - and I started getting indications again on the far shelf and manage to pick up another 4 fish before the all out. I even manage an F1! I say that because all my other carp were Commons or Mirrors, which are not supposed to feed much in the winter.
By my reckoning it's between Woody (P6) and Stuart(P7) and it is, with Stuart taking the win by just over 3lbs with 35lbs flat ahead of Woody's 31lbs - 6oz. Alan Welsh(P8) was third with 18lbs+.
Full results can be found here.
A freezing cold day when the temp never got over 3 degrees but despite the cold, over 110lbs of fish were caught!
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