The Barston Christmas event is usually one of the big occasions of the winter on the open match scene, but with a couple of inches of ice on the shallow big lake, venue owner Nigel Harrhy was forced to try and call the whole thing off.
However, he didn’t have the phone number of everyone who booked on, and when 17 turned up he had to make contingency plans.
In the end he opted to place the event on the venue’s small Match Lake rather than the big lake, which is usually pretty dire in very cold weather.
The Match Lake was frozen over as well, but it’s stocked with F1s which almost always feed and so it proved, Carl Bradbury putting a winning 21-8-0 on the scales on maggot, with Mark Casemore in second with 19-14-0 on pellet, and Matt Winson third with 19-0-0.
“Those F1s are unbelievable feeders given such cold conditions,” said Nigel. “We had to break an inch of ice, which took over an hour, and yet they still had a go!”