Saturday 12 August 2023

11/08/23 - Ivy House - Old Match Lake

Weight - 92lb 9oz
Catch - 19 Carp
Weather - Warm & sunny
Match - Twilight Open (12 fished) - 6th overall

Well, this was a match of 2 halves, not helped by the realisation that I left my no.5 section at home and missed the first 15mins as I returned home to collect it.

I drew P5 which is Ok and a peg I won from a few weeks ago.
 
Once I got back to my peg I started on the method to the island, whilst I sorted out my pole rigs, I lost everything on the 3rd cast to an underwater snag and didn’t bother setting up another.
 
A switch to paste at 16m, potting in 6s and catapulting 6s over the top, I soon caught my first carp, but struggled to get a proper bite. There were a number of fish swimming through the swim which I tried catching shallow without success.
 
I kept feeding quite heavily with 6s hoping the fish would settle and did catch 2 more fish on paste but I think I had over done it by being too aggressive with my feed.
 
Ideally, I wanted to catch over my short line where I had fed 6s from the start, to be my main line, but surprisingly this line didn’t produce a bite despite the swim fizzing.
 
At the halfway point (5hr match) I only had 3 carp in the net. I noticed p13 opposite had been catching the odd fish shallow, but not a lot had been caught along my bank and I hoped for a few late on.
 
As I felt I got the feed wrong on my 16m line, I moved to my right at 16m on the other side of the island gap, just feeding through the toss pot which worked much better as I started to catch.
 
I had also been feeding both margin with 6s and they started to show signs of life in the last hour. I needed to feed micros to keep the fish coming and managed 4 from the right margin and 3 from the left all on paste to add 45lb.
 
In the end the slow start probably cost me a frame, although the bulk of the weights came from the bottom end of the lake.
 
1.    131-  1 – Carl Mulford – p10
2.    121-  8 – Tim Hadland – p8
3.    105-  8 – Mick Lane – p12
4.      98-  6 – Gary Knight – p16
5.      97-10 – Mike – p13

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