Why do??????

[chesters1]

water never gets colder than 4? degs ,if it did it would ice up from the bottom and never thaw

[RobStubbs]

I don't think water temperature really matters in winter - it's just flipping cold ! What does appear to matter is things like an influx of water (rain or whatever). I see no pattern in my winter catches but then there's been too few to analyse on any single water.

 

The only guarantee is that if you aren't by the waterside you deffinately aint going to catch.

 

Rob.

[Newt]

Mald:

I fish a Cat water that will not produce a single Cat in the winter and I wondered if there was a trigger temp that had the same effect on the Carp?

It sounds like the Wels react like several of the US catfish species and just seem to go missing when things cool down.

 

I love catfishing and am happy our blue cat just go deeper but keep feeding in winter. You just have to find 40-70 ft water.

 

For the channel cat and flatheads, I'm off them until the dogwood trees start to bloom next spring. It seems like the conditions needed for that are also the ones that wake the kittys up from their case of lockjaw.

 

Carp do slow down but can certainly be caught.

[RobStubbs]

Wels are certainly a waste of time in the winter. Quite what they do I don't know, perhaps they really lay up like they used to think carp did ?

 

Rob.

[Dick Dastardly]

I think they just slow down pretty much like you say Rob.They sometimes feed on very mild days but hardly worth putting in the effort.Then again they dont seem to lose much weight over this period of in activity.In the rivers in Czechoslovakia I fish they catch them with snow on the ground! but then again their winter is a lot longer so I suppose this combined with the current forces them to be more active.

 

Winter Carping? Been there ,done it and dont bother any more! Catching a carp in the snow is certainly one of anglings "musts" but once done no need to keep doing it! Carping for me is warm summer evenings and cold winter dawns for me are for piking.

 

Oh and those long,long winter nights stuck in a bivvy used to do my head in! no wonder the modern day guys take tellys!

[Mald]

Like I was saying I fished for carp all last winter and caught on odd occasions but the sport was few and far between..

 

It's down to personal preferance but I'm going to do a mixture of fishing this winter and get down to a few more rivers instead of just doing the long bivvy sessions.

[poledark]

Not sure you are right about that Chesters, water is certainly at its HEAVIEST at 39.2F (4C) and so it sinks to the bottom.

 

Water above this can be right down to 0C at which point it freezes.

 

The ice will go on getting thicker until it reaches the bottom if the winter lasts long enough.

 

The temps I mentioned in my earlier post were taken at about 4ft deep at different parts of the lake, but it is quite possible that where I caught the fish (there were others on different days as well) the water was deeper and was actually at the temp of 39.4F.

 

Still bloomin cold though frosty

 

 

Winter can be a lovely time to fish, today for example in the SE we had a bit of sun and the trees still hold some autumn leaves and this coupled with a bit of mist made for a very pleasant day....didn't even get a "bleep" but at my age I am not really bothered...just being there, having a chat to the bailif and the occasional dogwalker....very nice thankyou

 

And then you get the days when the SouWesterlies blow, and the temp rises and (hopefully) the carp switch on...usually brings rain, but so what, I have my Stealth brolly and good old Sundridge waterproofs. There is even a perverse pleasure in sitting under cover watching the rain lash down

 

Den

[chesters1]

ah but it becomes self adjusting ,the top freezes and insulates the water below ,water IS frozen at 0c but it starts freezing at 4c .

you remember '63 as i do ,the sea froze but lakes near to the sea didnt freeze from top to bottom ,i remember a couple of ponds in folkestone where the ice actually had an air gap beneath it insulating it even more and remember ice floats so it would rise to the top anyway ,nothing wrong with either of our maths but nature prevails and water remains at 4c any lower it becomes "slush" and floats the icy bits going up the rest mixes with the warmer water and goes back to 4c,luckily this works otherwise we wouldnt be able to fish they would all have died in a really bad winter long ago

[poledark]

Chances are that the water level in those Folkestone ponds dropped after they froze. What you say only makes sense if there was a limit to how thick ice becomes, I had a garden pond which was 4feet deep and it froze solid one year (can't remember which year though )

 

I also remember the ditches behind the flood barriers on the R Arun being covered with ice suspended a foot or so above the water which had dropped in level after it had frozen, and we all must have seen ice on puddles that had "dried up" underneath.

 

Ice will go on getting thicker if the temp remains low enough.

 

Den

[chesters1]

yes but it floats above the normal water level and provides even more insulation ,take the coldest places on earth theres water under the ice so long as theres a summer temp rise,solid ice such as ice flows are made of snow compressed into ice so can be miles thick.

small ponds will completly ice up not because their shallow but because the natural circulation is innefective the water not moving is unnaturaly effected by freezing temps.

the water freezing as i said floats more freezing pushes up the ice more untill a balance is acheived the ice actually stopping more forming by its insulating properties from the temperature "outside" so were both right water does freeze but differently in different conditions ,nature isnt just an occurence its been appening for ever ,even now we have fish even in in this country that live in isolated places well above the last ice age's edge if it didnt freeze then it wont now and the ice age was a bit colder than 63

pure water freezes at a different temperature to pond water the more fish the more warmer the lake its something to do with ice crystals sheer plates and gas molecules :confused:

 

[ 08. December 2004, 11:16 PM: Message edited by: chesters1 ]