Saturday morning again was an early start with the breakfast crew who had already arrived to assist in feeding the anglers at the event. Big thanks here must go to EA Simon, Turkish, Alan, Rosie, Garry, Dicky and Kev the veg for their help. Buttering hundreds of rounds of bread and cooking egg, bacon sausage all anglers were fed and treated to a breakfast in a record one hour ten minutes, quite a feat. Helped greatly by the use of Rosie and his quad bike to get them delivered. Looking around both lakes showed us that the night-time temperatures had frozen them solid, still a good day was ahead and to be fair none of the anglers moaned about the situation showing what sports they were.
As ever this sort of event always gives me something to laugh about, normally its regular Martin Lewis (Smarts) catching items of tackle out of the river, which he did this year on a lesser scale. However he was to be beaten when news came in that one of the anglers on the syndicate lake had gone back to his bivvy Friday night thinking that the water in front of him was not iced up. The morning revealed a somewhat different site of two baited rigs sitting with a quantity of freebies all neatly on top of the ice. He (and I'M not naming names to save embarrassment unless money is handed over to us) swore blind that he had not been drinking much to the merriment of all the onlookers whom came to witness the event.
Later that morning a bit of drama began with the news that two swans were beating merry hell out of each other in the weir pool, one of which was certainly getting a good beating and had all but given up its right to survive. Quick thinking from Allan, Smarts and a couple of other lads led to the swan being recovered from the pool, wrapped up and placed in Martin's bivvy whilst arrangements were made with the swan sanctuary to pick the bird up. For some unknown reason little was seen of Smarts for the next hour, (some suspected a little "fowl" play was taking place, though we knew he was just "swanning" around elsewhere).
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