still chilly chilton

i had 17 booked in today but with rich coles not showing as he is to old and his side kick paul locke out with man flu there were only 15 of us huddled in the car park by woodlands lake, and by the time 6 of those decided that they werent up to some serious ice breaking we were left with 9, so on with the draw and we only used the far bank as the ice was only 3 1/2 inches thick, luckily andy hembrow had taken the 5 ton digger round the day before and broke all the pegs to about 3 mtrs so fairplay to him, also brian shanks knocked us up some more ice breakers that weigh 10lb but they still took 2 or 3 chucks to make a hole but once through they sawed well, but it still took 40 mins to clear to 6 mtrs. i was drawn on peg 11 which is a good draw, that good that even mat(lightweight)tomes managed to win off it last time we were here, he weighed 24lb but i think it will need less today,
by the time we started most people had managed to clear to 6 mtrs which should be enough as this is a deep venue with most people having 7 to 8 foot at 6 mtrs. the rig today was the same as last time ,a 1 grm affair with a 20 6313 on .10 .
at the start i cupped in 6 mags and 20 soaked micro,s, it took me 10 mins to get my first bite and that was a small roach, a ferw minutes later and i had a 5oz skimmer and for the next 90 mins i had a few more small roach and to be honest i was doing ok as by this time the only other person with fish was andy hembrow on 14, and that was only a small roach. on the 2 hour mark i had a bit of a scare as mike west on 9 hooked a carp down his margin luckily after a short tussle it came off, but i didnt laugh(like fxxx), and that was really the end of my match as i only had 3 more small roach during the last half, so i had to wait it out and watch everone else get some small roach towards the end with alan oram on 15 seemingly doing the best towards the end catching over a ball of g bait he fed towards the end. my plan of feeding a couple of maggots and micro,s after each fish worked to a fashion but with such limited space to fish in you dont get many options when things stop happening. mike west gave me another scare 5 mins from the end when he hooked another fish down the edge which turned out to be a good roach of well over a pound so he still might beat me with one fish as i thought i only had about 1lb 6oz but in the end i just scraped it with a hard won 1lb 12oz
2nd went to alan oram with his late burst which went 1lb 8oz
3rd mike(1 roach)west 1lb 5oz
4th phil(fabsy)harding 13oz
5th mark(bunt)broomsgrove 8oz
6th mike chapman 6oz
a couple of thanks, one to andy hembrow for breaking some pegs even though he nearly ended up in the lake when peg 30 collapsed and he nearly went in with the digger (clean pants please). misha for the coffee,s and warm sausage rolls and mike west for doing an absolutely brilliant job of cleaning my peg of ice, cheers mate.
so there ended a really difficult day, but there is a thaw now for a few days at least so hopefully the lakes will lose there hard hats