I started to get that feeling yesterday whilst waiting in my drive for Don to pick me up for our match at Sumners Pond. My neighbour came out to defrost his car and our conversation went something like this:-
Hello mate, you're not going fishing today are you, it's bloody freezing ?
Yes
But wont the lake be frozen ?
Yes, but we have ice breakers
Do you actually catch anything when it is this cold ?
Not a lot and I did blank on sunday.
Anyway, we arrived at Sumners Pond to fish the Main Lake (we call it the silvers lake) and found that the lake was partially frozen although not too thick. Having collected the money, my breakfast arrived and I dispatched the two Steves (Gardener and Sanders) to do the pegging as they only moan if someone else does it !
My main concern when fishing silvers matches at Sumners is that I don't want to draw next to any Dorking anglers as the result always looks embarrasing when I publish the peg by peg results ! As we neared the end of the draw there were just two pegs left and Bag Up Bob did me a favour by drawing next to Terry Harrison and left me Peg 1, next to Paul Taylor but quite a way away leaving me lots of room.
For those who don't know the lake Peg 1 was to the right of the Cabin and has a square floating island at about 14 metres. It is a peg I have always wanted to draw but possibly not when it was iced over. I arrived at my peg to find a very friendly Robin sitting on a branch waiting for me, so out came some maggotts and he was soon tucking in to them like nobodys business. The next job on the list was to clear the peg of ice, tapping with a pole cup worked to some extent but as I got further out the ice got thicker and I had to resort to scrounging Paul Taylor's ice breaker.With Marcus (my usual ice breaker) round the other side of the lake and stubbornly refusing to come round my side, I had to resort to chucking the breaker out myself, which isn't good news when you have been an office worker all your life ! I managed to clear myself a decent channel out to about 13 metres, then decided to give it one big heave ho, launched the breaker to the horizon and pulled a muscle in my arm !!!!!!!
I set up two rigs - both my usual Sumners rigs now, one being an 0.12 Hook in the link rig cos I don't think you have to fish so fine with these rigs as the hook moves about, and an 0.12/0.10 rig with a T213 size 18 hook. As expected, the match started slowly for everyone but after half an hour a few people started to catch a fish or two, but not on my side of the lake. After two hours it was just like being at Willinghurst as I was still biteless - only joking Terry. But then the ice started to melt and I set up another line at 14 metres at about 10 o'clock (the direction not the time). I cupped in a few micros and expanders over the new line, dropped the rig in and a couple of minutes later the float disappeared and I soon had my first fish - a skimmer of about a pound in the net. Out went the rig again, i dropped in another 3 expanders and..................nothing, a switch to the island swim gave me another skimmer about a pound and then nothing. The light on the water was a nightmare one minute white (which was perfect) then the wind would blow and the ripples meant you couldn't see the float tip then the sun shone right in your eyes which meant you couldn't actually see anything but a big orange ball in front of your eyes ! I quickly set up another rig to fish in front of the island where the light was better and had another skimmer almost immediately. Can you see a pattern developing here ? Maybe I should just have started up a load of different lines, catching one fish on each.
With about 90 minutes to go, Robbie Taylor on Peg 15 (on the point on the right hand bank) had probably already won the match as he had been catching small skimmers steadily throughout the match but second place was there for the taking for anyone who could put a run of skimmers together. Unfortunately it wasn't going to be me although I did manage to catch another 5 skimmers all from along side the island.
Full Result
Peg 1 Dave Pearson 10-0-0
Peg 2 Paul Taylor 7-2-0
Peg 3 Steve Gardener 16-14-0 4th
Peg 4 Tony Lodge DNW
Peg 5 Adam Lee 19-0-0 2nd
Peg 6 Bubs 8-12-0
Peg 7 Steve Sanders 6-2-0
Peg 8 Donald Garnish 18-12-0 3rd
Peg 9 Brian Wharton 12-14-0
Peg 10 Bag Up Bob DNW
Peg 11 Terry Harrison 10-8-0
Peg 12 Mick Keeper 9-8-0
Peg 13 Marcus Page DNW
Peg 14 Giovanni 9-8-0
Peg 15 Robbie Taylor 33-8-0 1st
So that was it, everyone had a few bites on another cold day, I increased my top weight at Sumners this winter from 8-10-0 to 10-0-0 and Brian Wharton had an interesting day as carp counted a pound and he had two doubles that went 22lb !
Sunday we are back at Willinghurst for the final round of my league with Pikey's Six just ONE point in front of Don's Foxy Five. If it fishes like it did last sunday with nearly half the field blanking then it could be anyones match - return here on Monday to see what happened,
