30/12/14 - Leech Pool

Weight - eh... nothing!
Catch - take a guess
Weather - Frozen
Match - post xmas knock up - last

After having to miss Saturday and Sundays match due to a pulled muscle in my back as a result of swinging Sapphire around on her ball & rope (which she thinks is the best thing...ever), I was eager to get back out on the bank. A trip to the osteopath, who found it quite amusing how I injured myself, soon straighten me out.

Mark had organised a knock up at Leechpool, really to get out of the house after all the Christmas excesses. However the recent weather had turned colder and we were met by a frozen lake.

Prior to the draw a couple of us cleared some swims, but when Nick eventually turned up he went one better, donning a pair of chest waders  to break a couple more swims. As the picture shows he looked happy doing it, it fact most of us haven't seen Nick smile so much!

With 8 of us meant at least we had plenty of room. Peg 1 was by the farm house, moving clockwise round to peg 8 in the cattle drink. I drew peg 2 which initially I thought would be OK, although it was next to one of the shallowest corners to my left, but it was also next to one of the best pegs on the lake to my right occupied by Andy Fox.

Thanks to Andy for letting me use his platform, which gave me a little extra room to ship back. Despite the thick ice I at least had an 8m long channel to fish. Nick Merry in the meantime on peg 3 was back out into the lake to lengthen his channel to 13m.

Well the match didn't go well for me. Andy on peg 1 caught straight away on maggot and gradually everyone had caught. I tried pinkie, maggot and expander. I evened scaled down to 0.08 bottom 22 hook, but still no bites.

After 2 hours the sun came out, which warmed everyone up except Andy & I as we continued to shiver in the shade of the barn, so I went for a walk.

Everyone had catching, particularly those on the opposite bank where the ice was much thinner and melting. On returning to my peg it had had started ice over again! I gave it another hour, but still no bites, so packed up early, suffering my first blank in over 10yrs. Oh well, it had to happen sooner or later! And yes Foxy you did batter me off the next peg. He was only going to get grumpy if I didn't mentioned it  - lol

Well done to Nick for winning from an unfancied peg, but making the effort to create a nice long channel was worth the effort. Overall it didn't fish badly considering the conditions.

1st 43- 8 - Nick Merry - p3
2nd 41- 4 - Ryan Heard - p6
3rd 33- 0 - Tom Ince - p5
4th 27-10 - Ade Crawley - p4