Last session of the year.

With the year drawing to close quite rapidly I was beginning to thing that I'd already seen my last session of 2010. Winter has surely kicked in early this year along with frozen lakes and a healthy dusking of snow.

I suppose its the child in me that loves to see snow on the ground but in Swansea its usually short lived and its back to normality usually a day or two later. Well this year the snow fell and stayed! not exactly ideal when I was hoping to get a bit of bank time in before the end of the year.

I've always wanted to get out and catch a fish in the snow and this gave me the perfect opportunity and I was sort of excited about going fishing in the snow and then I stumbled on one minor detail...all the lakes were frozen!!!

I tried my luck at Whitesprings as I know that the pleasure lake is fed by the spring and very rarely freezes over but with the cold nights in Wales pushing a record -17°C I arrived to find only a small section of the lake without a lid.

Whitesprings in the snow.

My initial thoughts were mixed, I didn't feel like fishing a little patch in the ice would produce anything but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to try and get a fish in the snow. I suppose my mind was already made up as soon as I'd seen a fish-able spot I at least had to give it a try.

It was a proper slog pushing the barrow down in the snow it was truly hard work and I wasn't looking forward to pushing it back up later, usually I would just park the car right next to the swim but today it would be suicide to even attempt to drive down the hill.

I set up the rods and tied on the rigs, I was going to use a small bait set up with either half boilies or trimmed down a lot smaller then wrapping a blob of peanut butter around the lot before casting out, but I had the wildlife to contend with. I cut down a few boilies then turned round to pick up the rod and as I turned back there was a flurry of flapping wings as two Robins and a Black bird made off with my bait.

A Robin and Blackbird Montage.

I eventually managed to bait up all the rigs while the birds swooped round me even landing on my shoulder in their quest to relieve me of my bait.

I placed all three rods out covering the whole section of unfrozen water and settled down in my chair and poured myself a nice hot coffee out of my flask, which was a bit of a shock to the system as the hot coffee seemed unnaturally hot, burning my mouth and teeth on my first sip.

Waiting for a snow Carp.

My little patch non-frozen water.

I'd been there for a few hours with no action at all, the cold was starting to nip at me. I'd sat there all wrapped up with my hands in my pockets and I was still feeling the cold. I got up and started walking around in attempt to get the blood flowing in my feet and hands again which eventually lead to me building a snowman, at first I thought it would be pretty cool, a bit of fun to pass the time and to be fair it was, I enjoyed myself but my hands were left colder than when I started.

My fishing snowman complete with boilie eyes, nose and buttons.

The snowman and feeding boilies to the birds were sadly the highlight of the session, I had not had a single knock since casting out. I decided it was time to pack up when I started to shiver, I reeled to rods in and they were all covered in the frost and when I tried to pack them down and they had all frozen together, after a lot of yanking, brute force just wasn't doing the job. I eventually poured the remains of my coffee in the flask on to the joins which was enough to loosen them but I was amazed how quickly the coffee froze to the rods.

I got everything loaded on the barrow and began the trek up the hill to the car, I can tell you now that the cold was the furthest things from my mind when I was half way up the hill as it was one of the hardest walks back to the car I have ever done. 

A little robin that hitched a lift on the barrow as I pushed it up the hill.

So, that was my last session of 2010 and like so many sessions throughout the year it ended on a blank but when I got back to the car the temperate gauge read -6°C so I can understand when there weren't any fish on the move. It would have been nice to get a Carp in the snow but none the less I still enjoyed myself and thats what its all about.

The Video blog of the session.