Linch Hill roach fishing - The lucky 13th?

Friday the 13th to Sunday the 15th of January

What a difference a week had made to the weather, high winds and double figure temperatures had been replaced by the first frost for weeks and as I pulled into the Linch Hill car park at 6.30am I was greated by several deep frozen vehicles, obviously anglers that preffered the deep freeze to the wind tunnel as I was all alone last visit. Ten minutes later and I was on the banks of Willow expecting to find several anglers present, I passed one bivvy in the swim that I had started in last week and recognised the set up as belonging to Vince who I knew would be fishing, leaving the barrow a couple of swims further down my plan was to watch and listen for any signs of roach before settling on an area and so I slowly wandered around the lake in the half light, pausing now and then for a while at points offering a good view. By the time I was opposite Vince it was obvious that there were no other anglers on the lake which was a nice surprise, presumably the cars belonged to anglers fishing Christchurch. Several laps later and having established that Vince had neither caught or seen anything it was time to make a decision, my best guess was to start at the end where I had seen a show on Saturday and so I plumped for the only swim on the end bank which gave me a view of the vast majority of the lake.
 
An hours work with the marker rod showed a similiar picture to that found in the other swims I had fished, mostly weed and a very few small clear areas though I did find a slightly bigger spot that was perfectly clear and just happened to line up almost perfectly with where the fish had shown last week, probably not a coincidence I thought. That mark could accomodate two rods and while looking for something else suitable a fish rolled not too far out and down to my left, that put me in a bit of a catch 22 situation, I'm not keen on casting a noisy marker at showing fish but then again it would be a brave man that played the chuck and chance game on this water and so I bit the bullet and cast well past the show and drew the float back across the area, weed, not very thick but not good enough. With nothing tom,lose now I had to check out exacrtly what was around down there and a few more casts found some quite silty ground with odd bits of blanket weed, I even got the tap tap of gravel on one cast but only for a very short distance and I couldn't get back on to it again, with nothing else particularly interesting elsewhere in front of me I decided to plump for the silt. If you normally feature find by pulling the rod back to one side feeling for bottom texture try tightening down to the rig and then point the rod directly at it, take the braid in your left hand and slowly pull back, you'll be amazed at how much more you can feel by being in direct contact with the line, I'm making no claim on this one it's all down to my mate Neil, very simple but very useful, a bit like Neil!

A view of most of the lake

With the important bit sorted it was time to get the bank house set up, I'd had a bit of bother with my bivvy last week in that three of the four poles had split, not good seeing as it had only been used maybe four times, fortunately I had kept hold of my old one which funnily enough was the original version from the same manufacturer and had been good as gold for six years. Trouble is I'd managed to forget to pack the infil panel, the saving grace being I did have a winter skin though it left a bit of a gap around the front and within an hour of setting up and getting everything organised a brisk northerley wind sprung up straight into my face. I stuck that for half an hour before I came the conclusion that I had to move the bivvy, it was absolutely bitter. Its incredibly what a difference wind chill can make isn't it, I fished through the very worst of last winter in temperatures below minus ten and was fine, when it finally warmed up I made the mistake of not dressing so well and went out in two degrees with a breeze, I think I lasted an hour.


The day passed without event, I was recasting the feeders hourly and was interested in just how quickly they were emptying so dropped a spare one in the edge to check, surprisingly all of the maggots had worked their way out within five minutes though an hour later they hadn't spread out much further than eight inches which would leave a perfect little patch of bait around my rig, Even more surprising was the fact that there was still a good few grubs in the same area the next morning. The overnight forcast was for minus one but by 6pm it was obvious that it was around that already and it was going to be a good one, I filled the kettle up before I turned in expecting the water to be frozen by morning but it didn't quite get to that, it went down to minus five still and just to stick a cherry on top we had a lovely dose of freezing fog from dawn until 10.30. It really wasn't pleasant all all I was getting into the sleeping bag between casts and when the sun finally broke through it quickly dawned on me that I wasn't going to see a bit of it in my swim which soon persuaded me to have a look elsewhere, a poor show really! Another spot that I'd been told about was looking positively tropical and a few casts with the marker showed that it was fishable so it was back to my winter wonderland with the delightful prospect of packing up a load of icy kit.

Brrrrrrr!

 The new swim was a short cast towards the lakes island, not perfectly clear as there were odd bits of silk weed and it was a little bit silty, but it was lovely and sunny, I really am starting to become a bad angler! The rest of the afternoon passed in the now expected way and with dusk came another sharp drop in temperature, there isn't much light pollution in the area and the clear night sky was incredible, I can't remember seeing the stars so clearly since I was in Australia and so stood outside admiring the view for a phile before turning in for the night. I was recasting the frosty rods again from dawn after having a very brief spell of excitement during the night when one of the rods gave a sharp dropback, as soon as I was out of the bivvy I knew that it was down to a gang of tufties splashing right over the rod but for a split second it was action stations. The day passed with the usual routine of casting the feeders and watching the water without seeing a thing except a grebe catching a small fish which I suppose I could class as a positive! It was apparent that the grebes and occasionally a cormorant were spending a lot of time working on particular area and I thought I would earmark that one for my next visit.

Spare me a maggot Mr?

 Soon enough it was time to make a break and I was ready for home to be honest, the last afternoon had been pleasant sitting in the sun but there was nothing pleasant about the first day and a half of endurance angling, one day I'll take up a sensible pastime. Before I left I had a good look around in the swim where the birds had been active and found that the majority of it was very clear which was a first and made it a definate starting point for my next trip, incredibly even though there was cat ice in the margins there was a group of carp right in the edge and looking quite active, perhaps I should change species!