Mr Matrix, My Life In Angling: Real Winter feeling on the Stour

I fished the River Stour today and the conditions were hard. Bright sunshine all day, no clouds in sight, very hard frost overnight with temperatures down to -4c! With that in mind I fished peg 4 where there is some depth.

I set up the pole for 13m in the deeper water with a 2.0g Drennan Tipo float to hold back on as it was going through faster than normal and fished over Sonubaits Super Crumb River ground bait with hook baits of red maggot and pinkie. I also set up a feeder to fish past the pole line on the edge of the main flow with maggot feeder and double reds.

Started off on the tip and took half an hour to get bite and to land the first fish. A small Roach of around 3 ounces. I followed that up 3 more Roach of the same size and then the delicate bites dried up. I can only assume Mr Pike had spooked them or they had just gone off the feed.

I baited up my 13m pole line with a golf ball sized of ground bait with a small pinch of of pinkies as offerings. The rig was 0.10 Matrix Power Micron to an 0.09 hook length, again the Matrix Power Micron. I prefer the power micron as its very fine and soft for fishing for silver fish in winter. I also use it for hard fishing conditions as, I feel, it gives me the edge over other lines that aren't as soft and supple.

I only had 3 fish in the 4 ounces size on this line within an hour so I went back to the feeder. I went on to catch 9 more fish to have a bag of around 2lbs. Very hard fishing today but I did give the new thermals and Derri boots a run out and they were excellent. I wasn't cold at all during the day and the hot coffee helped :)