While a Friday pre-match ‘recce’ had revealed strips of ice-free water along the East banks of both No4 and No5, prospects did not look great. However, a relatively mild night, together with a decent SE/SW wind and some rainy spells, did much to open up parts of both reservoirs, especially No4, by Saturday morning.

   A rainbow came out to a non-competitor early out of No5 on an Orange Booby fished deep and slow, while Billy missed some taps, with Barry landing another, also on the Booby.

   Along the favoured first few swims at the top of the West bank of No5 there was still just a thin strip of free water, but Harry made the most of an early move here to get a good fish, as did others either side of him later.

   Frank and Tony found good conditions for the floating line in the sheltered SW Bay of No5, with Kevin and Andrew dropping in next to them later. Frank did well to get a fish on the floater here, but sportingly returned it, having heard that Harry’s fish was a decent size.

   As the ice retreated, both Barry and Andrew looked at the Houses Bank, with Andrew getting a nice fry-feeder on an Orange Booby, while the afternoon also saw sport hot up along the Causeway, with Billy getting three out of No4 and one out of No5, Jim getting a couple, and Barry finishing with four.

  Nice fish can often appear in the closing stages of this competition, so it was no surprise when Dave landed a near-three pounder in the last ten minutes.

  In the end it was Harry’s good looking 3-8-0 rainbow (part of a two fish bag with another almost the same size) that got him the shield, but the good news is, that even though levels are down, and continuing to drop, those fish are still on the feed, especially in the afternoon.

  Providing you take care on the exposed concrete banks (ranger Cliff recommends going down backwards, so you can use your arms to steady yourself) and can put up with the temporary restricted parking, there’s no reason why you can’t end up with a couple of decent fish. If they continue to pack on weight fry feeding, prospects should look very good once the levels come back up again in the Spring.

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Friday had revealed only thin strips of ice-free water on No4...

Results

...and No5 didn’t look much better either

But by Saturday morning there was a lot more free water

Even though sport was slow along the Causeway in the morning

Harry with his ‘winnings’