It was a last minute decision to fish the Saturday open at Manor Farm, with temperatures plummeting to -3 the night before I was expecting to get to the lakes and find them with a lid on.
Thankfully they weren't and the hardly souls that turned up where sensibly split over middle and boundary lakes. I was hoping to be on middle but out came boundary 11 on the far bank.
It was pretty much a pellet attack for this match with 4mm's prepped for feeding with 4mm and 6mm expanders for the hook.
I also had some bread for the lead, and it was this that I started with on the all in. This didn't result in any bites though with no indications what so ever in the first 40mins. First drop on the pole line though resulted in a quick run of F1s and a couple of skimmers.
unfortunately they disappeared with out a trace, I searched all over for them but couldn't get any more bites apart from the odd skimmer. To end the match I cast the lead back out with a standard 6mm hard pellet on and was surprised when it went round! I had two small carp in the last half hour to end up with 17lb which was 5th on the lake and 6th overall. Middle had faired worse than boundary with one weight of around 40lb and the rest barely scraping double figures.
It wasn't surprising though and when I was packing up my nets were all frozen solid which will give you an indication on how cold it was!
Thankfully they weren't and the hardly souls that turned up where sensibly split over middle and boundary lakes. I was hoping to be on middle but out came boundary 11 on the far bank.
It was pretty much a pellet attack for this match with 4mm's prepped for feeding with 4mm and 6mm expanders for the hook.
I also had some bread for the lead, and it was this that I started with on the all in. This didn't result in any bites though with no indications what so ever in the first 40mins. First drop on the pole line though resulted in a quick run of F1s and a couple of skimmers.
unfortunately they disappeared with out a trace, I searched all over for them but couldn't get any more bites apart from the odd skimmer. To end the match I cast the lead back out with a standard 6mm hard pellet on and was surprised when it went round! I had two small carp in the last half hour to end up with 17lb which was 5th on the lake and 6th overall. Middle had faired worse than boundary with one weight of around 40lb and the rest barely scraping double figures.
It wasn't surprising though and when I was packing up my nets were all frozen solid which will give you an indication on how cold it was!