24/07/22 - Ivy House - Old Match Lake

Weight - 65lb 12oz (12lb 12oz - silvers)

Catch - 15 Carp, 1 F1, 12 Skimmers, 1 Hybrid, 1 Roach

Weather - Warm & sunny

Match - Steve Martin Summer Series (14 fished) - 10th overall, 5th in section

The penultimate round of Steve Martins summer series was supposed to be at Shiplate, but they didn’t have us booked in. Fortunately, we manged to switch the match to Ivy House and a big thank you to Andy and Karen for fitting us in at short notice.

I don’t usually mind where I draw on this lake, but p13 was probably the 1 peg I didn’t want as its not normally the best area.

Starting at 16m on 6mm pellet only produced a couple of small skimmers and switching to paste short produced some better sized skimmers and a small carp.

The way the match went I had to keep chopping and changing, having a run of skimmers on corn before catching a decent carp which killed that swim. I also caught a couple of carp on the short paste line and in between I caught a few on the method which turned out to be my best line.

Frustratingly I lost a few fish, particularly on the feeder, but in truth it probably only cost me 1 place, as the top 3 in my section all had 90lb.

In the last 90mins I managed a couple of carp from my margins on paste, but to be honest I never felt I was in contention as I couldn’t catch quickly enough, and the carp were on average a smaller stamp. As a result, I only finished 5^th in my 7 man section, which was disappointing, but at least managed to consolidate my position in the league

1.    154-  4 – Andy Eagle – p5

2.    150-  9 – Tony Gilbert – p4

3.    111-14 – Steve Martin – p7

4.      99-13 – Si Davis – p8

5.      97-  8 – Martin Pettifer – p14