13/11/22 - Ivy House - Willow

Weight - 38lb 4oz (7lb 10oz - silvers)

Catch - 3 Carp, 26 Skimmers

Weather - Mild, bright and sunny.

Match - Winter League rd1 (50 fished) - 3rd in section

The first round of the Winter League and 5 sections of 10, so a really good turnout on what turned out to be another unseasonably mild day.

The section draw was completed on Tuesday and I was very pleased to miss the section of death, which included several potential league winners.

My rotation meant I would start on Willow Lake and the draw put me on p19 – a proper boom or bust peg and to be honest I didn’t fancy it as it was very bright and flat. What little breeze there was blowed left to right out of the corner.

I spent the first 45mins looking for a carp, catching 2 skimmers on 6mm pellet at 6m, but no bites on the straight lead or feeder. Tim next to me on p20 had 1 carp on the feeder and this was the only carp caught from the anglers I could see. Therefore, I decided to target the skimmers, catching best at 14m on 4mm expanders, feeding a nugget of micros. I tried hard pellets, but just had to wait longer for the same sized fish, which were a little on the small side, so I stuck with expanders.

After 2hrs this line was beginning to fade and there was no sign of the bigger skimmers. I briefly tried my short line which I kept topped up with corn, the straight lead cast to the spit where I kept pinging 6s and down the left-hand bank, but never had a bite.

In the meantime, pegs 24 & 26 opposite both had a carp a piece. With no carp of my own I decided to have one last look over my silvers line that I had topped up with a ½ cup of micros. 2 small skimmers were netted before the swim went quiet and I hooked a carp of 6lb, which was very welcome, but that line had now died.

As I couldn’t get a bite on corn over my short line, I moved a few metres to my left, feeding 6s instead. A rotation of swims didn’t produce anything and with 45mins of the match remaining I felt I needed to do something different and dumped a load of leftover bait (groundbait, micros and corn) 2m off the right-hand margin in 2ft of water.

As that settled, I netted a 9lber from my short pellet line and then with 15mins remaining caught a 14-15lb carp from the margin swim on double corn to make me feel much happier.

In the end I was really pleased to come 3^rd in section and felt I got out of jail on a lake that fished a lot harder than expected. As expected, the top 2 in section came from the pegs behind me.

1.    128- 6 – Mike Etheridge – p12 (old Match Lake)

2.    121-10 – Joff Rogers – p9 (heron)

3.    107- 4 – Jon Arthur – p3 (old match lake)

4.      85- 2 – Steve Waters – p14 (old match lake)

5.      82-10 – Jamie Durrup – p4 (heron)

6.      79- 4 – David Stafford-Way – p10 (heron)