Day 1 Monday morning it was a day on my gear new line on my reels laggy a couple of top 3 kits sort what i was doing and then a few brownie points by tiding up
plus the normal 20 phone calls ::) ::) ::)it seamed the coldest day and made me think why would you want to go fishing on Tuesday 
day 2 Tuesday up at the crack of dawn kids taken to school then down the motorway to packington missing all the rush hour traffic and arrived through the rain and snow to the fishery i had a quick coffee and a chat to see where to and fish but the info was a little harsh its been rock hard fishing on all the lakes molands had a match on it and the smaller lakes had ice on them
lucky for me the early numbers were hadn't been taken so i thought peg 8 would do nicely
i couldn't believe how much work the lads had done most of the tree's and bushes have gone looks a little unsightly but will improve the fishery 100%
the wind was strong but at least over my back
i decided just to fish pole as i could make a few rigs as well which i could use later in the week it must of been at least -9 in the wind and i really started to ask the question why had i bothered
any way plumbed up one line at metres and one at 13m which is the limit for this competition I'd been told that the weekends match all the weights came to fishmeal based G/B so i dug out a bag of Sensas gold and a bag of lake Ive used this mix a time or two and found it mixed really well
I'd mixed it the night before with warm water just to make sure nothing floated off it
the rigs were quite simple .4,.6 and a .8 plus a really light rig with strung out shot
plumbing up on these sorts of waters is very time consuming part as every little hole or depth changes need to be explored for this i use two or three different plummets a clip on one if i want to fish over depth then a big and a small flat plummet the small can show you if there is a lot of silt in the peg with the amount of pellets and G/B that are used create a large amount of waste and can move with the winds so its important to find these clear bits
if you have never been to packington the silverfish fishing can be second to none and chatting to John and dave they have just put in 1,200lb of red fins prime red fins from 10oz to a pound and a half all from the trout lake
plus these fish would of course feed mainly on bloodworm as only artificial flies have ever been used on the trout lake
my bait was either Russian or English joker the difference is plain to see
Russian is very small and tends to lie on the bottom
where as English jumps around even with low temps when they are acclimatized to the water i always put mine in the water from the lake or canal then net it out when adding to leam or G/B
Ive listened to the likes of bicko, sam wildsmith over the years and to be fair i must be a slow learner
:-?as its taken me years to adopt this preparation and only now realising the advantages [well as soon as i start drawing again]hook bait is simple good old bloodworm for a start
easy to look after clean fresh water everyday can keep them for weeks
another lesson from bicko always measure your bait quantities so you know how much youve put in and its easy to tell others
if you don't and you say ive put a handful in well with my hands that would be a pint of joker 
for this day i put 100ml in 6 balls of leam and a little G/B JUST TO MAKE A BED i then though i'd give myself a chance and added 200ml to make 4 really rich balls of G/B and cupped them in
as the match is fished for four hours i started at 12 midday til 4 pm
it was very slow but in the end i caught nothing at 5m so it was out to 13m where i found loads of bites but mostly very small roach and rudd and you could of put 3 to 4lb of them together but hay this is a commercial you need bigger fish and a few of them i tried everything and all the rigs and nothing bigger was coming ok it was freezing but i though at some point the bigger fish would show plus the bits were getting harder to catch
had i fed too much for the conditions if i topped upwould it bring back the small fish by mid afternoon the tow had picked up so i icked up the strung out rig PLAN Z double bloodworm and lowered it in bingo 
i was play a bigger fish
shortly after that one another
everything was looking good in the snow and rain but this didn't last long as i had one more but what a beauty and fight i ended the day with 51bits for around 4lb and 3 big roach all around a pound mark plus this beauty
it was home time and i felt for the condititions it was a ok weight of fish
day 3 Wednesday
i couldn't go i had a meeting in birmingham but wanted to go as the lads went to barston to have a go
i couldnt wait until dinner to find out how they were doing
then the news none of them had a bite again it was bitter cold Gaz in the end set a feeder rod up out of boredom and managed two bream so they were there but the presantation on the waggler was one to sort outDay 4 Thursday coming up
next put in and another 
::) 
