I finally got to the water

Hooray !! 

I finally got to the water today. Even if it was cold and murky ,

I fished The Old Ballast Pit in Tonbridge ,the top half of the lake "The Lagoon" was still iced over, and most of the platform swims were underwater. I concentrated on fishing around these sunken marginal features , and managed to tempt one critter out, with a 6" chartreuse plastic shad, which I jigged around the features at a snails' pace, the fish took the lure almost at my feet.

It was the only detectable bite that I had during the 3 hour session. 

Still it was great to get out for the first time with the lures, and hopefully I might get out again soon.  

After yesterdays trip I sat down to analyse my approach to the day,
When  I first saw the state of the water, I reasoned that it was going to be hard going , the water level was up to, and over the bank in parts, the whole of the Lagoon end was iced over, and was inaccessible due to the water level covering the path on the far side of the pit , right up to the railway embankment.
All of the the platforms bar one, were covered with water,
The visibility was better than on my last visit , about 12 inches.
So I reckoned that a slowly jigged,dragged and retrieved shad, fished slowly around the bank-side features,would be my best approach ,
I reasoned that there was a lot of extra cover around these submerged structures, for a fish to lie up in.

As I was fishing right in amongst the wooden platforms, and submerged obstacles, I used my heavy jerk bait rod (80 -120 gm), and multiplier set up, with 50 lb braid, so that I could keep any fish out of these structures, and also have a chance of keeping a lure or two.
Which were 6 " plastic shads on a 7/0 jig head with a stinger Drennan double/single.
It was not the time to use a lure with any bottom mounted hooks.

At the end of the day-
I caught a fish, and it gave me a good scrap,and I enjoyed myself.

But most importantly I felt  that I was getting a bit of a handle on this lure fishing lark.(only a bit )
At times, in the past, after a couple of hours of inaction, and my concentration was going, I would begin to chuck the lure about aimlessly, just going through the motions. swapping, and changing lures in the hope of finding the right one, changing lures is OK but not the whole of the answer.
Today
I stopped myself ,
I took a break,
I had a sit down ,(and got a cold backside)
I refocussed,
looked for some features that I had not targeted ,
changed the lure colour,
changed the lure,
and concentrated more on how I was fishing that lure.

And in the end I got a result !