Thursdays evening match saw a real change to the weather, with the recent high winds, heavy rain and mild air temperatures suddenly a cold frosty front saw the air temperature drop to minus 3, the lads who fish these matches are really dedicated, or mad!!

The water was still coloured due to all the rain water coming down the rivers, which feed the docks system yet it fished better than it has done for a couple of weeks. At night its hard to get an accurate gauge of just how colored the docks are but the worst of colour was past and as the silt in suspension starts to clear the fish start to feed again.

Top rod on the night was John Macey, he was on the corner by the Mud Dock and he included a 9lb 7oz carp in his catch of roach and skimmers. John took 20 minutes to land the carp on an 0.12 bottom, he landed it with 5 minutes to go before the all out.

The bay behind the Mud Dock seems to hold a some carp, Ive heard stories of people seeing big fish up to 30lb in this bay, if you ever fancy trying to catch a carp from the docks system this is the type of area to try. There are a lot of these little bays or docks around the docks system and this is the place to target them, in the summer people see them taking bread off of the surface when feeding the ducks, although these fish may be hard to locate because they are never caught they should be quite easy to catch.

Second on the night was Alan Healey with a catch of 4 skimmers for 6lb 6oz, liquidised bread in a feeder with punch on the hook was the successful method. This normally works better when the water is clear and cold but Alan made it work in the dirty water.

Third was small fish specialist Dave Clutterbuck with 4lb 12oz made up of 1 skimmer and roach and dace caught on the pole with pinkies on the hook, Dave Shore was fourth with a similar catch to Dave Clutterbuck he weighed 4lb 2oz.

Dynamite Baits backed Pete Sivell was 5th with 3lb 3oz of roach and dace from the end peg, no 1. Petes brother Merv was 6th with 2lb 12oz of skimmers and roach.

If you fancy fishing this stretch of the docks you need to be prepared with pole rigs of about 2g as the depth on the pole line is 17ft deep and on the feeder line its 20ft deep, although you dont need to fish a long way out.