Rob's day

At Beggar's Hall today – following a cold start to the year most still waters have been frozen over for a week or so. Checking Beggar's the last couple of days, due to the milder start to the week the ice had mostly disappeared – on Tuesday all pegs were fishable with the exception of pegs 12 and 13 behind the island.

Unfortunately, Tuesday night/Wednesday morning saw the temperatures dip again to around -3c but it was still a surprise to see Beggar's iced over again come Wednesday morning. There were some pegs on the low bank that had a few meters of ice free water so a few of us decided to remain and fish that bank.

So, five of us in total we decided on pegs 3-7 would give us the best chance, hoping the sun forecast today would help recede the iceline. I drew peg 6 next to Bill on peg 7, Graham next door on 5, Steve on 4 and Fred on 3. With only around 10 meters of ice free water to go out it was just the case of fishing a bomb or feeder as far out as I could, but I wasn’t feeling too confident expecting the majority of the carp to be balled up somewhere, probably in the middle of the lake or around the island.

Bill had less water to go at with the ice creeping into our bank at first not melting at all it would seem. Half way through I had a walk down to see if anyone had anything and saw Steve halfway up the bank with a double figure carp in his landing net so we hadn’t all blanked.

Into the last hour and the ice at last started to thin and move out – a look to my left saw Bill with his landing net in the water – a walk over saw a carp around 12-15lb safely netted (not easy with Bill sitting up high on the bank) Caught on the waggler around 8 or 9 meters out.

Bill's fish went 14lbs 8oz to win the day with Steve the only other to catch with his carp going 12lbs 1oz. Good to see a couple of carp being caught even in these extreme conditions. Next couple of matches Sun and Wed at Hall Farm, hopefully ice free and a couple of bites!