Anglers Cabin - Hemlington Lake, 4th November 2012

The 7th match at Hemlington lake with Anglers Cabin.  Having had a nostalgic journey back to this childhood venue and being free on Sunday I decided to venture back to Hemlington Lake with the Anglers Cabin crew.

The weather over the weekend was starting to get colder and a frosty scene greeted me when I woke up.  It will be all about the silver fish today I thought to myself!  The car also had a layer of frost which I decided to defrost from the comfort of the driver seat with all the warming devices switch to maximum heat.

Nine lads turned up to brave the cold weather.  I drew out peg 3, so a very short walk for me this time.  My neighbours for the day were Adam on Peg 2 and James on Peg 4.

Peg 3 had an island chuck for the feeder and I decided to fish 14.5 metres out due to the gin clear water.

The Set-Up

  • 10 foot bomb rod with micro cage feeder
  • 14.5 metre pole line at the 10 o'clock position
  • 14.5 metre pole line at the 2 o'clock position
The depth at 14.5 metres was the same for both swims so the one rig would suffice.  The rig was a Malman Winter Wire SL to  0.12 mainline.

Bait for the day simple, red/white maggots, casters, hemp, some expanders pellets and a pinch of sweetcorn to try and tempt a carp.  I also mixed up a small amount of ground bait for the micro feeder.

The All-In
My two pole swims I decided to feed both very negatively due to the extremely cold weather.  The 10 O'clock swim I potted in a small amount of hemp and a pinch of maggots and some casters.  The other pole line was started with a golf ball size ball of ground bait and some casters.

I would leave these lines for 30 minutes before trying them and sat out on the cage feeder to the island with a single grain of corn, recasting every 10 minutes.  No bites, no indications, nothing...

Trying the pole lines with maggot, caster and expander pellets also saw no bites, no indications, nothing at all...  After the first hour nothing caught and most of the other anglers were suffering the same fate!

I decided to try something different and wetted my ground bait down to slop to feed in order to create an enticing cloud to tempt some of Hemlington's silver fish to feed.  This didn't work either and still the other anglers with the exception of two of the lads hadn't caught a thing.

The match proved very frustrating and the weather actually got colder as the day went on.  A thick fog descended and it was proving tough to see the float at 14.5 metres.  My feet by this stage had turned to blocks of ice!

The last 40 minutes of the match after trying everything I threw the feeder out with a single red maggot to try and tempt the smallest of silverfish to take as one fish would secure me 3rd place.  The other two lads that had managed to bag some fish had caught all carp.  The water temperature was at zero degrees celsius and I'm sure I've read that carp don't feed at anything less than six degrees celsius... puts paid to that theory! 

The final 20 minutes after getting nothing on the single red I tried another piece of corn on the feeder and resigned myself to the fate of blanking.

Sure enough the all-out was called and 7 anglers out of 9 had caught nothing at all, no bites, no indications, nothing... 

The Result
In the great scheme of things, I came joint 3rd, along with the 7 other lads that blanked! ;-)

Well done to Stewart Bell for bagging 8 carp for 28lb 15oz and the win along with Matthew Johnson (Daftlad) for his second place 3 carp for 11lb.

Conclusion
To be honest, I'm a little lost for words on this one, apart from this will be my last match until Stafford Moor in Feb/March.

I tried different tactics to try and bag a silver fish none of which worked.  This was the first real frost of the year and the temperature seemed to drop as the day went on, horrible conditions...  

For 7 anglers not to catch anything and 2 anglers to catch nothing but carp leaves me at a loss to explain why... unless the black plague or the 4 reported cormorants have sent the silvers for cover???

More pictures of the day...














Comments

Edward Lewis said…
Do you think you will have warmed up by the time your next match comes round in Feb/March?

I blanked on the Derwent this weekend.. all in all a pretty poor fish catching weekend!
Mark Lewis said…
Hi Edward, Hopefully my blocks of ice that were known as my feet will have thawed out by Feb/March ;-)

Thanks for reading. Lewy
Edward Lewis said…
Lol.. are we related?!
Anonymous said…
You need to move back down to civilization,mate!
Mark Lewis said…
I'm guess the anonymous feedback about moving back civilisation is from one of my london mates.... Mr Haisman? ;-)

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