Just over a year ago when I won a small local open with 82lb, 75lb ahead of second place! Never fed a thing and was one of those days when everything I tried to keep the fish coming worked!

Made up for catching bugger all the week before through a hole in the ice!

funnily enuff it was this winter, just as the cold started they was a skin on the lake, i broke the ice and as soon as i put the breaker away i was plumbing up and getting liners!
4.5 hours later i had 55lb for a easy win (20lb second)
one lad at my right blanked!
i never fed anything (think if i did they would have gone who knows?)

ohh and on this lake 50lb is hard in summer!!

Not sure about best but here’s a couple of favourites,;
Fur & Feather on R Colne a couple of years back- three minnows in net with 45 minutes to go and ended up with 7 chub on the stick for 28-14, approx double the second weight.

Same venue a couple of years earlier- series of 4 matches and I was so far ahead after three that effectively all I needed to do in the 4th was catch , which isn’t necessarily as easy as it sounds there in February.Drew a real “one bite one chub” peg with nearest rival on a roach flier. To cut a long story short, had my only bite with a minute to go, tight across to the far bank brambles, which turned out to be a minnow which somehow stayed on shipping back 14m across fast flow on a barbless 20 and 12 elastic. Lad who was second in the series had 6 or 7 lb of roach and had been told I was blanking with 5 minutes left. He was on scales as well- would have loved a pic of his face when he got to my peg and saw the bottom 2 inches of keepnet in the water, especially when he saw what was in it.Won series by a few points..

Moral of both of above- Don’t give up! At this time of year, best chance of catching well is so often the last hour. Would always be amazed when I used to fish a lot of opens on the Ouse and other rivers at just how many good anglers would pack in on chub pegs because they hadn’t had a bite in the first three hours.

My best winter match

Winning a round of an Angling Times winter league many years ago on the Trent at Shardlow with 50lb of chub on the feeder.

Back when the Upper Trent was a proper fishery. Still miss it now

i dont know whitch would be the best,thinking about it now ive had some good winter match catches over the last five years one that does stand out is an open on kjs canal breaking the ice not having a bite for an hour and weighing 94lb. then drawing the same peg the following week to weight 54lb and going on a run that was to pocket me around £1000 in a matter weeks.there flooding back now couple of years back i fished a knock up at fishlake 20 pegs but a good standard weighted 107lb for first 82lb was second another good was kiverton waters winter league two years ago i had 75lb for second getting beat by paul massey with 85lb. the most recent stand out winter match was the back end of november at portland water where i drew peg 18 and didn,t fancy it at all but went on to weight 85lb for second place beaten by the bloke on peg 17 who had 95lb my peg must have been solid though i recon i lost 30 to 40lb of foul hookers.

martin always love your comments,,,made for fishing,,,,,

last year at s/moor
silvers fest,,,drew 34 on tanners,,day2
fished 7mtrs with double dead mag,,over 3 bags of s/stim, 3 pints caster, solid,,76ib all skimmers,,biggest was at least 10oz( in fact i think they were all same weight)
geeps on end peg flyer had 40ib odd, chap other side had same i think,,,may not be the biggest silvers weight,,but on the day everything went 100% it was my best match ever,,,~clap ~clap

My best winter match for a long time occurred recently. Leeds knocked Man U out of the F A Cup~clap

@redpaste wrote:

My best winter match

Winning a round of an Angling Times winter league many years ago on the Trent at Shardlow with 50lb of chub on the feeder.

Back when the Upper Trent was a proper fishery. Still miss it now

dead right Andy

I don’t know about my best match but one of the most enjoyable was on the Derby AA Association Cup in 1985. I had 36lb of Roach, Dace and a few chub on the stick and caster on Metalworks Lane at Willington on the Trent. I won the match and the guy weighing in said it was one of the best nets of fish he’d seen. I had 3 or 4 chub around 2-3lb and the rest was roach to 1lb and dace around 4/6oz.

Anyone where I fish the totally opposite method to everyone around me and win.

@drawbag1967 wrote:

Anyone where I fish the totally opposite method to everyone around me and win.

Ican see where your coming from there mate. I think its a good feeling to get a result fishing different to the norm.

Fishig for Raven in the Berkshire WL a good few years back.

Venue the Kennet! Drew beat 1 a no hoper of a peg the one below was the better one, but by feeding constantly and running a waggler along the far back I drew the fish up from his swim finished with five big chub for 26ib or so and the match. Oh and it was my birthday ~clap

My first match on the River Wye during the Xmas hols in 2006 with 69lbs of roach including two fish over 2lbs.

I fished seven matches on the river that year including 2 more wins with 66lbs of roach and 57lbs mixed bag of roach, dace and perch, giving an average weight of just over 40lbs over the seven matches.

It was a perfect end to the season

@redpaste wrote:

My best winter match

Winning a round of an Angling Times winter league many years ago on the Trent at Shardlow with 50lb of chub on the feeder.

Back when the Upper Trent was a proper fishery. Still miss it now

Shardlow still is mate – it’s full, and I mean FULL of quality roach now. Try the Burton festival next year.

@clfletch wrote:

@redpaste wrote:

My best winter match

Winning a round of an Angling Times winter league many years ago on the Trent at Shardlow with 50lb of chub on the feeder.

Back when the Upper Trent was a proper fishery. Still miss it now

Which bit’s? We used to catch a lot of roach around the A6 road bridge, between the bridge and Marina mouth

Shardlow still is mate – it’s full, and I mean FULL of quality roach now. Try the Burton festival next year.

My best ever winter match would have to be last year on Lower Lake at Broadlands in Hants.

Totally iced over when we arrived, some hardy souls volunteered to go out in a boat and break enough ice for us to get the pegs we needed.
Great offer, and we managed to put the match on, however, due to the size of the venue it was impossible to remove all the broken ice from the lake so there was still loads floating around the lake, but at least we were fishing.

With the lake being gin clear, I decided to start with a softly, softly approach on a maggot feeder, small hook, light hooklength and infrequent casts. After an hour and a half, and without the slightest indication for myself, the guy on the next peg had caught 5 carp on a method feeder and double hair rigged corn!

With nothing to lose, I changed to the same set up, and within 5 mins caught my first fish, and started getting regular bites. The amazing thing were the bites, which were as violent as you would get in the summer, with the rod slamming round, and a couple of times, before I could even get the rod back on the rest!

I continued to catch for the rest of the match, eventually winning with 76lb, and all this after having to steer the fish around the floating ice!

It got me thinking, are we too negative in our approach sometimes, or was it just that the fish recognised the method feeder as a known food source over my original maggot feeder set up? (And before the locals recognise me, yes it was my usual flyer, and yes it probably was solid with fish, but why didn’t they want the maggot feeder?)

102pound on mere more, hazel grove angling match.
straight waggler double red maggot 4ft deep in 7foot of water. Was a couple of winters ago when the middle of febuary went really mild!!
me m8 was 2 pegs away and had 3carp and packed up an hour early and went home the fish were tightly shoaled. And we were sharing lol.told him he wasnt having any tokens for goin home early lmao.

One of my best winter matches was a Leatherhead DAS club match on the Wey Navvy at White Hart a few years ago.

I’d not drawn one of the fliers below the stream at White Hart infact the peg I’d drawn was one I’d blanked from the previous winter in similar conditions.

I decided to fish bread punch 2/3rds over and started the match by feeding a small ball of liquidized bread.

I think I caught a roach 2nd run through and continued to catch for the rest of the match whilst my mate Ross was the next swim down and caught the odd fish but nobody else had caught a fish with an hour to go. At one time I had about 9 anglers lined up against the fence behind me watching and had great fun by swinging in 5 ounce roach instead of netting them, just to take the pxss !

As the light faded in the last half hour a few others started to catch but I think I won with 18lb and Ross was second with 6lb with 2lb third.

I think my most satisfying winter match would have to be the first year i fished in the big Makins winter league back in 2001.
It was at a time when i was contemplating the switch to commercials from the canals which i used to fish with a canal based team that fished all the main winter leagues on the canals in the Midlands.
I couldn’t decide wether to give the canals one more winter or wether to take up an invite to fish the league at Makins with Gedling.
Anyway i decided to give Makins a go and i think it was the third round when i drew peg 25 on the Severn pool and won the Phase with approx 45 lb,not a big weight i know,but back then there were 20 teams in the league and there was 100 anglers on Phase 3 and it was when Billy only used to pay the winner of each Phase plus sections.If i remember correctly i beat Grant Albutt into second place who was on Avon pool and i pocketed the £500 winners prize (very nice)..That was really satisfying,but what i was more satisfied with was the fact that i felt i had made the right decision to switch to commercials from the canals ~clap

fished a match,just the lads from work, in the early 80s on healy dam and it was that cold only 6 turned up.3 hours in and not a bite so put a piece of corn on and stuck my hands in my pocket to warm them.a 20+ pound mirror carp took my rig and set off like a train before i could stop in on my light tackle it had gone threw mick and eds rigs so there were 3 of us hooked up to 1 fish. i had fool hooked it in the tail.only fish landed that day with the help of every one else. did i win, no.we called it a draw and went to the pubs for a pint and i had to pay.still funny after all these years.

~clap ~clap ~clap ~clap ~clap ~clap ~clap ~clap

angling times clubman macc canal(marple) 1st in the match with 20pound of large skimmers.that was the bak end of winter.the skimmers had spawnig spots on them again shoaled up for something or other the canal has never fished like that since that i know of. all caught in the 1st hr on bread.