arctic landsend

it was supposed to be the landsend individual league today , but mike had the good sense to cancel it due to it being frozen solid. even though, we still had 20 hardy(dumbasses)souls turn up to break ice, which was 12mm thick after 3 good frosts which have seen temps go down to minus 7 in recent nights. with peg 11 coming out of the draw bag i was happy .
getting to my peg i set about ice breaking and soon had it broken up to 12 mtrs which was just at the bottom of the island shelf. next i went round to peg 13 where mike west was struggling a bit as he had done his back in the day before clearing ice on peg 24. after that i went back to my swim and started to get ready , then jason radford turned up behind me as he couldnt clear the ice due to pullling a muscle in his chest a couple of weeks ago in a fight , and i think the hobbit won!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!. i started to clear his peg but luckily tony page took over as he was ready allowing me to go to my peg and get ready.
one rig a 4x14 rig with an 18 808 to .10, i had broken the ice iether side in the margins but by the time i was ready it had frozen over again so that was a none starter, we started at 10.30 and it took me an hour and 20 mins to get a bite, which i missed(must have been i liner). an hour after that i had another bite which i connected with , it came straight to the top and i could see it was a skimmer of about a pound , the problem now was that ice had formed in the channel i had cleared but by keeping the tip below the ice i managed to get it back to the top set but as i lifted it up the elastic connector stuck in the ice and the fish came off (luckily no one laughed,yes right)
i did have 2 more bites and managed to land a 4 oz perch and apart from 2 perch gary wall had on peg 7 no one else on our side caught.
the match was won by martin lenaghan on peg 34 where he had 11 carp on maggot by a bush on the island for 94.10 and it was a golden peg aswell so well done to him so he had a pick up of 275 quid, nice.
2nd and not to far behind was kev molten with 17.10 on peg 19
3rd mat tomes 14.6 on peg 31
4th mark leader 13.12 peg 27
5th mike duckett 13.6 peg 16
6th andy france 12.10 peg 33
silvers were won by that well known silvers ace (i cant believe i just said that )timmy clarke with 9.13 of roach off peg 25 just edging out john bradford on 39 with 9.2 which was the silvers golden peg he was abit gutted as he lost a 2lb tench first put in and he also lost 5 or 6 good perch so he had his chance.
the speci lake fished quite well with people catching roach on most pegs where as on the match lake you couldnt get a bite full stop , very strange.
to be fair landsend didnt fish to bad when you consider viaduct ,where carps were having there xmas match and it was won with less than 4lb and not a single carp was hooked , and when you consider the ammount of fish that are in there it just goes to show how badly this sudden cold snap has upset the fish