Wed 11th Jan - Island Pond

With the temperature forecast to be a balmy 10 degrees, the Wednesday match looked like it might produce some good fishing.

There were 11 of us entered with Jimmy Hillhouse and Bryan Hewitt making their first appearances for quite a while.

I don't know how he does it, but John P again managed to draw a good peg - Anywhere from 4-9 on the Island Pond are normally reckoned to be potential winners. I drew Peg 30, which produced no fish during last Saturday's B division match, so I didn't expect too much.

I'm sure the thermometer doesn't lie, but it felt more like 3-4 than 10 degrees - Again we had a north easterly wind that strengthened during the match.

The water didn't feel quite so cold as it's been so I decided to start on the far shelf which I could just reach without the 16M section. And within 5 mins I had a 4oz 'stockie' carp in the net. This continued at a slow but steady pace for the first 2 hours with 15 similar sized stockies coming to the net, all on my own flavoured pellet from the far shelf.

And then I made a schoolboy error - To my right on Peg 26, Brian H had had a lovely carp around 3lb and to my left on Peg 2, Jimmy H was also catching some nice fish from the deeper water - so I abandoned a line that was producing fish, and put on a rig made up for the bottom of the shelf. And I had a small tench, a 1.5lb mirror and then a 2.5lb F1 in around 40 minutes - and then nothing - and of course when I went back to the far shelf, they were gone.

What an idiot!! - So I was then fishless 'till with 15 mins to go I hooked another F1 from the bottom of the shelf which I lost at the net, followed swiftly by another small tench. I was getting very weird bites in the interim, but the only one I managed to hit produced a 2oz Roach!

So at the weigh in, I only had 9lb - 8oz. Which gave me 5th behind winner John P with 31lb+, Jimmy H in second with around 28lb+ and Heather L in third with 21lb+ - all caught on my special pellets that she 'borrowed' from me :-) So at least I know if the fish are there, they will take them.

The Wednesday matches give me a chance to try things, which today I did - but I (hopefuly) learned a valuable lesson - If you are catching, even if they are small fish, keep doing what you're doing :-)