I Guess Winter Finally Arrived!!

It’s amazing that in one week the weather can change so radically. Just one week ago I was packing up after landing my second biggest common ever. The outside temperatures were in the 5°C and it was fairly overcast. The water temp was 6°C during that weekend.

Last Session for January and my Second 40lb+ Common

41lb 8oz Second January Forty

With the weather forecast announcing the arrival of a prolonged cold snap next week, I felt that I had to get back out and do a couple more nights before the cold eventually put an end to the carp’s willingness to feed in winter.

The first few days of the week had been very wet so I was waiting for a 48 hours window of fairly dry weather in which I could wet a line. I really don’t like fishing in the rain. The odd shower is okay, but constant rain I just find depressing.
So Friday dawned bright and dry with a reasonable weekend in sight, and I loaded the car to drive down to the Tortue lake.
I elected to fish the same peg (14) where I’d caught all my fish so far this year. Why change, as the fish were obviously visiting this area? I know from experience they often don’t go far in winter. The water in the lakes was a fairly uniform 6°C.

Chilling in the Hammock

I’d made up a half a dozen PVA bags the night before, filled with 5mm carp pellets and broken Proline Red Devil boilies, so getting the lines out was a very quick affair this time. I had been using Quest Baits Pineapple, as I wanted a smaller  & instant bait for winter, but having run out, I only had the lake specials to use. My hook baits were hi viz tutti fruitti pops fished snowman style. I was hoping that a fluoro bait would give me a chance in the day time, as all the fish so far, had come at night.
With the baits in place and the hammock set up I made myself some dinner.  I climbed into the sack at around 8pm. I lay there reading before eventually dozing off.
At about 5am, a couple of bleeps and a steady run, on my left hand rod, signaled that I’d had a take. The fish did nothing special before rolling into the net. At 25lb it was a nice start. I did a couple of pictures and slipped her back.

Another Nice January Brace and a Monster Crucian

A nice mirror just shy of 30lb

I managed to get out again this week for an overnighter and once again got amongst the fish. Since my last trip a week ago, in unusually mild conditions we’ve had something of a cold snap the last few days with several heavy frosts, and cat ice in the edge of the lakes. I’d guess the night time temperatures got down to -6°C.
So Wednesday morning, with the frost still on the ground and ice still in the edge, I set up on the Peg 14, where I’d managed the fish last week. I reasoned that if they were active they may still come on the plateau in the Tortue to feed.
Again tactics were the same, a PVA bag of pellets and chopped boilies & some 14mm Quest Pineapple, with a Pineapple/Crab snowman combination.
As we settled in, things didn’t look anything like as promising as the previous visit. There I’d seen activity right away, but here with a cold wind and spitting rain, nothing was visible.

First Forty of the Year

First forty of the year

As I said in my previous blog post, with the mild weather, until now anyway, and relatively high water temperatures the carp have been very active. I spoke about the pair of young Dutch anglers who fished from the 2nd of January.   I now have a couple of photos to add. Here is a brief resumé of their session.
Jimmy Heijink and his mate set up on pegs 5 on the Croix Blanche and 13 on the Tortue. The used a bait boat to drop PVA bags of pellets and strawberry boilies to the shallower areas where fish were showing. The water levels were quite high so that would be around 12 feet deep.
Within 24 hours they had managed several fish to upper 20’s, which is pretty good for a month of January. Despite being mild the weather was quite extreme with gales force winds and heavy rain showers.
The lads stuck it out however, with Jimmy moving up to peg 15, due to the activity he had observed in front of that peg.
The last night saw one more fish out of the Croix lake and the icing on the cake for this early season session a superb 20.5kg (45lb) mirror.

What’s happened to Winter?

Croix Blanche 2010: What has happened to Winter this year?

Its funny how the years pass and are so different. One year we have a heatwave in the summer and the next it’s cold and wet.
Take the Winter; this time last year we were in the north pole, we had several feet of snow. In fact it was the heaviest in living memory for most of the people in my village. The temperatures plummeted well below freezing and the lakes were solid for well over a month.

So how different it is this year. 2012 comes in with the warmest start in over 100 years. In fact 2011 was the warmest year on average since records began. We are still yet to have a significant frost…
Its strange that we don’t seem to have regular and proper seasons any more. If proof were needed 2011 is a good case study. We had a spring that was not only exceptionally dry, but the hottest on record. Temperatures were up as high as the mid thirties by mid May.

The summer then quite simply didn’t happen. After a rainy, cold July, August was barely better. The Autumn however did give us some fine and sunny weather.

Croix Blanche Snow Gallery 2010