Frant Lakes. Lake 4. January 12th, 2003.

Hawthorne AC club match.

Well today was the first Hawthorne AC club match of the New Year and the first chance that I’d had to get out since before Christmas. Looking out of the window as I woke up, my first reaction was that it had snowed again, but no it was just a very severe frost.

On the way down to the lakes at Frant the outside temperature was registering -7° centigrade, and it was with some apprehension that we pulled into the car park, Only to be greeted by the site of all six lakes frozen solid.

Thankfully the food wagon was up and running, so after a fortifying egg & bacon sandwich and a steaming mug of tea we made our way down to Lake 4 which had allegedly been ice free the day before, armed with a selection of weights, chains and ropes to try and free up some swims.
To say this was not a success would be an understatement, in fact we were on the point of calling it a day and cancelling the match when help appeared in the shape of the owners son with the fishery ARGOCAT.

Eventually enough swims were cleared, and a vote was taken to cut the match short to 4 hours to prevent to much suffering and frostbite.
Into the drawbag and peg 13 (unlucky for some) stuck to my hand.
Over to the far side of the lake where the low sun was straight in my eyes. A bit of deft work with the landing net cleared enough floating ice out of the way to allow me to start fishing at about 7mtrs.

I decided to keep things simple and fish a fluro pinkie on the hook and just drip a few in with a kinder pot. Well I got some bites that I managed to convert to a few fish (all small) but enough to keep my mind off the temperature which managed to struggle up to a positively tropical +1° centigrade during the course of the match.
A slow but steady procession of small Roach, Rudd, Perch, Gudgeon and Skimmers produced a netfull that was enough to swing the scales round to 5lbs 2ozs at the end of the match which gave me 3rd place.

Not the biggest bag of fish by any means, but very satisfying given the conditions, and certainly better than a day spent decorating.