28/01/24 - Ivy House - Heron

Weight - 29lb 14oz

Catch - 19 Carp, 10 F1

Weather - Sunny with cloudy periods. Breezy start, calm later

Match - Winter League rd 6 (48 fished) - 4th in section

The final round of the Winter League and my turn for the good pegs on Heron. P22 wasn’t the best, with an average of 5.4pts coming off the peg in the previous 5 rounds, as you are competing with the pegs opposite and p21.

Starting on the lead and bread produced 3 Carp and a F1 in the first 45mins, but I could see Jamie Durrup and Jamie Dixey both catching well on p10 & p11, so I was already up against it.

Switching to the pole at 16m (using a short 4) was difficult due to a side wind that was proving awkward, and I ended up using a bump bar. Feeding a small nugget of crushed expander and maggot, bites were difficult to come by and the fish I did catch were of a smaller stamp. I also lost a couple of fish as I struggled to get decent presentation.

As I felt I was starting to fall behind Jason Hunt to my right on p21, I tried the maggot feeder cast to the island and wished I had tried it sooner putting together a little run of fish before the action died off.

Back on the pole, the wind was starting to die down in the last 90mins and I started catching some better stamp of fish. In the last hour the wind had dropped sufficiently for me to go to the full 16m, using a long 4, where it was very slightly shallower. So far, I had been using a 0.3g maggot rig, with a bulk and 2 droppers, but with the lighter wind a switch to 4x12 rig with spread shotting was much better and I caught some better fish towards the end of the match on single maggot.

It was nip & tuck between myself and Jason, and fortunately my late run of fish meant I beat him by 3lb, but as expected p10 & p11 claimed 1^st (55-14) and 2^nd (38-8) in section and I finished 4^th missing out on 3^rd by 2lb.

To be honest this match was probably a reflection of how my league went. I finished 21^st overall, which was disappointing after finishing 2^nd and 6^th in previous years. However, when I look at my draw’s I had no real flyers, and you need a bit of luck, particularly with the calibre of anglers fishing this league.

The table below shows my draws over the 6 rounds, with my results in green.

Peg	Rd 1	Rd 2	Rd 3	Rd 4	Rd 5	Rd 6
Kingfisher - p37	5	7	2	7	2	4
Old Match Lake - p3	1	6	6	4	7	5
Heron - p17	8	7	4	8	2	5
Moorhen - p31	7	7	5	1	7	3
Willow - p20	2	6	3	8	3	7
Heron - p22	7	8	3	3	6	4

 Top 6 on the day

1.    133-  3 – John Morgan – p46 (Kingfisher)

2.      57-10 – Matt Hamilton – p10 (Old Match Lake)

3.      55-14 – Jamie Durrup – p10 (Heron)

4.      53-14 – Joff Rogers – p2 (Heron)

5.      41-12 – Steve Waters – p13 (Heron)

6.      41-  8 – Simon Duke – p19 (Willow)

27/01/24 - Shearwater

Finally I got my car back from Volvo, only took them 6 weeks to replace an auxiliary battery!
 
I made a late decision to fish Shearwater, selecting a peg on the road bank, opposite the lawns. I took just the one rod, fishing a XR Banjo feeder at 60m, loaded with Uzit green Thatchers, micros, P-nut 4s.
 
After baiting up with 4 feeder fulls of bait, I had 5 Bream in the first hour. After that I had a couple of quiet spells and finished with 16 Bream up to 4-12 for 51lb, only losing the one fish. Using the new Uzit worm and pineapple clouds around my 6mm wafters, with the worm cloud being the best today.
 
It made a pleasant change, catching some nice fish and I think the first frost for over a week, plus bright calm conditions meant the fishing proved difficult and I didn’t see a single carp being landed.

07/01/24 - Ivy House - Willow

Weight - 8lb 15oz

Catch - 5 F1, 13 Roach, 6 Skimmers, 2 Perch

Weather - Cold. Cloudy with sunny periods. Northerly breeze.

Match - Winter League - rd 5 (48 fished) - 3rd in section

The penultimate round of the Winter League and my turn for Willow Lake. With the weather turning colder I really fancied drawing the deeper pegs, 23, 33 or 34, however ended up on p20. Not ideal, but not the worst and the last 5 matches on Willow I have been on either p19 or p20, so I knew the contours of the swim.

I had the point of an island to target and on the pole line, it was shallower to my right and about 4ft out in front.

Starting on the straight lead and corn to the point of the island hoping for an early carp and after 30mins I didn’t have a bite.

Switching to the pole at 14m, feeding a nugget of groundbait (50:50 mix of uzit bubblegum & crushed expander) with a few micros, fishing a 4mm expander I soon caught a couple of blade skimmers and a F1. However, I was bumping a few small fish and switched to a maggot rig with .10 bottom and 20 hook, attached to a 5 elastic, fishing a single maggot I continued catching including a few more F1s.

Of the anglers I could see, with the exception of Neil opposite on p27 who had caught a couple of proper carp, I was doing OK.

After a couple of hours I tried my short line which I had fed with groundbait and kept topped up with maggot, but all I caught were tiny roach, so didn’t waste too much time on this as I felt I needed to catch some proper fish.

The 2^nd half of the match was more of a struggle, I set up 2 new swims, one positively fed with groundbait and the other negatively fed. I had hardly had anything over the positive swim and only a few more silvers and another F1 over the negative swim at 16m.

By this time the light was terrible with the ripple, the sun was in my eyes, and it was getting colder. I tried a mini method with groundbait and dead maggot towards the rope, but no bites. Back on the 16m line I tried varying my feed, hoping for a few more F1s, but only caught a few more roach and blade skimmers. As I was catching very little, I tried for a carp towards the point of the island in the last 30 mins where I had been pinging 6s and corn all match, but no bites.

In the end Neil on p27 easily won the section with 5 carp for 41lb, Jason on p23 had a late carp to add to his F1s to claim 2^nd beating me by less than 2lb. It was tough going on this lake with Mark to my left on p19 weighing 5oz and Jamie on p21 weighing 4lb, so I was pleased to get 3^rd.

1.    70-  0 – Joff Rogers – p1 (Old Match Lake)

2.    50-  4 – Steve Waters – p10 (OML)

3.    50-  0 – Matt Hamilton – p50 (Kingfisher)

4.    44-12 – Carl Mulford – p10 (Heron)

5.    43-  8 – Dwayne Seed – p21 (Heron)

6.    41-  9 – Neil Morgan – p27 (Willow)

06/01/24 - Ivy House - Kingfisher

Weight - 6lb 5oz

Catch - 5 F1s, 1 Perch

Weather - Cold start. Sunny start, then cloudy. Light breeze.

Match - Open (10 fished) - 6th overall

Still no car as Volvo is still unable to diagnose the electrical issue! As I didn’t want to miss the Winter League I hired a van for the weekend.

Following a week of torrential rain, it finally stopped yesterday, but that meant it had turned colder. We were all on Kingfisher today which was still coloured after all the rain, but at least the venue hadn’t flooded thanks to the groundwork to increase the height of the bank running along the brook.

At the draw everyone wanted to draw the high 40s, as this has been the form area recently, however I found myself on p38 at the other end of the lake.

I expected a hard match, but to be honest not this hard. I started off fishing tight to the far bank and then the bottom of the far shelf, fishing maggot over Uzit Crushed Expander and never had a bite.

I eventually caught an F1 over my short maggot line, but that was the only fish I had at the halfway stage.

With 2 hours remaining I decided to big pot some ground bait with dead maggot far to my left at 16m, just to try something different and caught 4 F1s on dead maggot, which was a pleasant surprise.

I tried the same trick down my left margin and hooked a big carp, but the hook pulled. I must admit I thought I would have another chance, but it never happened.

A poor day, but I was simply in the wrong area of the lake. Baggy to my right only had 3 carp and 2 skimmers and Paul to my left had 2 fish, whilst the framing weights all came from the middle of the lake.

1.    53-10 – Phil Godding – p42

2.    25-14 – Chris Timms – p45

3.    21-12 – Steve Fox – p44

Silvers

1.      1-12 – Chris Timms – p45

31/12/23 - Ivy House - Heron

Weight - 30lb 4oz

Catch - 16 F1, 8 Carp, 3 Gudgeon

Weather - Wet and windy, with some hail thrown in

Match - Open (11 fished) - 7th overall

I was sad to hear of Dave ‘Dodgy’ Downton’s recent passing due to cancer. Dave had a big influence on my fishing as I moved from fishing the occasional club match to fishing leagues and opens.

I first met Dave when he ran a tackle shop in Yate and it wasn’t until he worked at Veals in Bristol in the early 2000s that I started to get to know Dave. He introduced me to my first commercial fishery, namely Ivy House. This also coincided with my decision to quit fishing the rivers competitively as I got fed up with the long walks, poor pegging and some poor fishing.

It was the trips to Stafford Moor I will remember the most as we spent a week in the lodges with Mike Etheridge, John and Rory Andres. I usually ended up sharing a room with Dave and remember one evening hearing giggling coming from our room and a whooshing noise. He was only under his bed chasing flies with a can of deodorant and a lighter. Unfortunately, I lost contact with Dave when Veals closed and he moved to be closer to Stafford Moor.

RIP in Dave, hope you are still catching.

Back to today. As my car is still stuck in the garage, it meant missing a couple of matches including the Ivy House Christmas match. It also meant I had to put back plans to travel up north to see Abi’s parents to later in the week and had no choice but to hire a car for the trip. I kept the car for the weekend, so I at least could do some fishing and decided to fish the open at Ivy House on Heron Lake.

There were 11 of us and I was happy with p11, although the wind blowing left to right was likely to be an issue and I expected it to be a feeder match.

I started on my normal winter approach of fishing the lead and bread to the far bank, which only produced 4 fish for about 7lb in the first 45 minutes, however Alfie on p8 was already on 9 fish.

I only set up 2 pole rigs, a 0.4g Chimp with a bulk and 2 droppers, and a strung out 0.3g rig just in case. When I switched to the pole, I could only fish at 14m due to the wind and a fed a small ball of Uzit crushed expander with maggot. Unsurprisingly the chimp rig proved to be better in the wind and by the half-way stage I was doing Ok with 15 fish, before a heavy hail storm came over.

After the storm the wind dropped a little and I was able to move out to 16m, switching between the 2 rigs to find the best presentation. On a recommendation I have been trying Guru F1 Maggot hooks, but lost 5 fish on the bounce which was really frustrating and prompted me to switch back to a Drennan silverfish match hook. Must say having tried these hooks over the last few matches, I’ve been unimpressed, and they will be binned.

After switching hooks, I started catching again, however the wind had picked up and I felt I had missed an opportunity to make the most of the favourable conditions.

I tried the feeder to the far bank, but only caught tiny carp, so felt I had to stick with the pole despite struggling with the presentation. My struggles were compounded when I lost a big F1 on a snag as I tried to net it, snapping my rig above the float. I managed to fish out the snag, expecting a big branch, but ended up with a keepnet! At least I was able to recover my rig as well.

To be honest I should have framed, as I didn’t fish my best match, but I was just glad to get home in the dry after the soaking we all received.

1.    57-  4 – Glen Picton – p9

2.    48-  0 – Stu White – p17

3.    44-  8 – Alfie Rhodes – p8

4.    44-  0 – Carl Mulford – p4

5.    43-12 – Pete Neate – p21