Nothing like 62/63 winter!

dezza · Jan 19, 2010

With temperatures starting to approach 10 deg C this weekend in the South of England most people are starting to wonder how the "big freeze" will affect our fishing.

Personally as one who experienced the 62/63 winter, I think it won't affect our fishing all that much.

The 62/63 winter produced snow drifts up to 20 feet thick. On many nights the temperature dropped to below -15 deg C. It was so cold that water supply pipes were frozen solid and taps in houses didn't work.

And the sea froze in many of the estuaries.

This winter, up to now, has been nothing like as severe as 62/63, when the fish in many stillwaters around Britian died under feet of ice, not inches. None of the stillwaters around Sheffield have had much more than about 4 inches of ice on them this winter.

The 62/63 winter started early December and went on through to early March. The temperature in January stayed below freezing in most parts of the UK. My Father's garden was perma frosted until early April if I remember correctly. You couldn't get a spade into it.

sagalout · Jan 19, 2010

BUT on another thread you are predicting the demise of the barbel in one river. I am confused!

904_cannon · Jan 19, 2010

I remember it well Ron, the winter my granny died.
One of my jobs as an apprentice Radio and TV engineer was installing/removing aerials (people used to take them with them when they moved house in those days, it was in Yorkshire) and by the time we'd taken the aluminium ladders of the van (a Jowett Bradford de-lux estate car actually) your fingers had frozen to them.

peter crabtree · Jan 19, 2010

I was 9 or 10, and we were snowbound in our bungalow in Harrow. No windows or doors would open. the last of the snow melted by the roadside in about May.............

dezza · Jan 19, 2010

There were many people who had to be dug out of their houses. The drifts were often level from house to house. When the wind blew, the white snow looked like dust, and felt like it too.

The nearest I felt like that was in the Namib Desert when the wind blew, causing the sand to bite into your skin, leaving a rippled surface.

The snow in England was like that too, only a darned sight colder.

Peter Jacobs · Jan 19, 2010

I remember that winter only too well!!!!

As a boarder we continued with lessons while the day boys got extra holidays!

Bleedin' unfair if you ask me,

still, never mind, come the revolution brother . . . . . . . .

Jeff Woodhouse · Jan 19, 2010

Ron The Hat Clay said:
The 62/63 winter produced snow drifts up to 20 feet thick. On many nights the temperature dropped to below -15 deg C. It was so cold that water supply pipes were frozen solid and taps in houses didn't work.

So cold that the flame on our candle
got frozen one wednesday night
and we had to warm it up in the oven
before we could get it to light.

Outside, some monkeys sang carols soprano
You could hear them cursing and swearing
as they wandered round lost in the cold and the frost
they couldn't find their bearings.

flightliner · Jan 19, 2010

During that winter i didnt/couldnt fish for weeks on end, the firm i worked for sent me on an outward bound style course in Derdyshire. On one of the days (after our morning jump into the river Derwent-- yorkshire boys--- not tough---daft!) we went rock climbing on the famous Stanage edge- a long outcrop of gritstone,some of the climbs were over sixty feet hige in normal conditions but the drifts were so bad/high that we spent the whole time jumping off the top edge and sliding down on our boots with an ice pick!--- absolutely fabulous!

Poshpaul (Angling Trust and PaSC) · Jan 19, 2010

peter crabtree said:
I was 9 or 10, and we were snowbound in our bungalow in Harrow.

It's really weird Peter. I was 6 then and I would have walked to my school from Headstone Lane in Wealdstone, opposite the old Stationery Office and Kodak factory, to Bridge Primary...now the site of Harrow Town Hall. And I cannot remember it. I just can't--where abouts in Harrow were you..up towards the Hill or out towards Pinner?

slime monster · Jan 19, 2010

I remember a Horse drawn Ice breaker with a team of two shire horses dragging a steel open boat full of men rocking about in it ,it had a row of steel teeth down the bow and incredibly was getting through the very thick ice,in those days the canal in Brownhills was very busy with commercial barges loaded to the hilt with coal so it was vital to try and keep it open.
We as young lads had been skating on the ice that day until we heard ominous cracking sounds heading our way,I will never forget the power of those horses.

Paul Boote · Jan 19, 2010

I was there, as a fish- and fishing-mad tiddler whose parents were realising (well, my old Ma, at least, whose Dad was just as bad, on the Trent in the early years of the 20th Century) that they had better encourage and nurture a child's passion rather than attempt to suppress it...

River Thames, Runnymede Meadow, early 1963. The entire river frozen deep and hard from bank from to bank. Hundreds upon hundreds of people sporting on the ice (including me, plus toboggan, sliding from one English county to another, ecstatically grinning in a Ma-knitted balaclava). Pics (maybe slides) from Dad's 35mm. Voigtlander camera of the era to prove it.

geoffmaynard · Jan 19, 2010

C'mon then. Where are they

Paul Boote · Jan 19, 2010

Maybe when I'm 105 and digitalizing of such stuff can be done by the home-help robot...........

Fred Bonney · Jan 19, 2010

I can certainly remember it, snow drifts up the doors on Boxing day still snow about 'til mid -March. Good fun for the gang.
I can't remember not going to school though.

Our local pond was frozen the whole time, I think we lost all the fish, there were some very good tench frozen in the ice, well they seemed to be good sized at the time.
It wasn't long after that, the grammar school was built on the site, we never did forgive the school for that.
Our learning fields gone for good.

Robert Woods · Jan 20, 2010

Had to get coach from Runcorn to Helsby Grammar School...roads clear then but not like they are now. Headmaster told us off for snowball fights so guess who I hit with one...!!!

dezza · Jan 20, 2010

"I'll niver forget that fust day at t'pit. Me an me Fatther worked a seventytwo hour shift en walked 'ome fourty miles in t'snow in us bear feet".

"Nearly Theer" said me Fatther through icicles angin off 'is nuese."

Mention such things to the youngsters of today and they won't believe you!

Poshpaul (Angling Trust and PaSC) · Jan 20, 2010

Ron The Hat Clay said:
"Nearly Theer" said me Fatther through icicles angin off 'is nuese."

Mention such things to the youngsters of today and they won't believe you!

I never realised Spiders was thy Fatther Ron. I'm fishing with him in an hour or so....I'll ask him to tell me all about it!!!

Graham Whatmore · Jan 20, 2010

I remember it only too clearly, I had just left the RN after nine years service in the early December having returned from 18 months in Malta, I started work directly in the New Year in B'ham.

You would be forgiven for thinking that I would feel the cold more intensely having returned from a warm clime but in fact I didn't, not a bit of it. I walked to work through ice and snow for three months and never wore a heavy top coat once, I also remember fishing both the Avon and the Severn during that period as well. Mind you I was 26 years old at the time and for whatever reason you don't feel the cold as much as when you get older.

I have woken this morning to an inch of snow on the ground and its still snowing heavily, just in time for my rearranged appointment in Bath for me poorly back, just my luck for the M4 to sieze up and closure of the Severn bridge to add to my misery, oh! woe is me.

geoffmaynard · Jan 20, 2010

I was 12. Every morning, before dawn, Dad and I built and lit a fire in front of the A30 (it might have been an A40 or A45? A wallace and grommit job anyway) and had to thaw the radiator before starting it with the crank-handle. The rod I was given for Xmas remained unused until June as all waters in the area remained frozen till well past the end of the season. The sea fishing was out too - we could walk to the end of Southend pier on the frozen ocean and our Tank aerial rods were not up to long-range casting. Duffle coats, mittens on elastic, fingerless mittens and balaclavas knitted by Mum, scarves, wellingtons and frozen toes in 2 pair of socks were the norm. And my Dad telling me "This is nothing, when we was on the Murmansk convoy runs, our 'ands would freeze to the steel cables through a pair of woollen gloves AND sheepskin mittens, and it would still take the skin off yer 'ands!"

Them wuz the good 'ol days ;-)

Paul Boote · Jan 20, 2010

Yup. And in those days when milkmen and morning deliveries of glass-and-foil-topped pints were the norm, you had to get to the milk on the doorstep fast - if you didn't, either the poor, starving Blue tits would peck through the foil to get at the cream-top of the milk, or the milk inside the bottle would freeze and, as it expanded, push the foil lid off with a upward-shooting cylinder of ice (at which point probably a hungry feral cat would probably get it). Quite a winter.

Nothing like 62/63 winter!

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