12/05/24 - Ivy House - Heron

Weight - 210lb 14oz

Catch - 88 F1, 69 Carp

Weather - Warm and sunny.

Match - Tackle Den (18 fished) - 1st overall

We were met by spawning fish and an instruction from Andy that we couldn’t fish within a metre of the margins.

I was more than happy to draw p9, which meant I was in the right area for F1s to attack shallow with caster.

On the all-in I started at 2+2 fishing paste (Uzit GLM Betaine Green) whilst priming the shallow caster line. The paste line was a little frustrating as there were plenty of fish about and getting a clean bite proved challenging. However, cutting out the loose feed and coming back by 1 section I caught better, including a couple of 3lbers in amongst the smaller carp.

After 50mins I was up to 16 fish and struggling

to get a proper bite again. Fortunately, fish were now showing over my shallow caster line and I started catching F1s immediately at 11m.

Now there are no limitations on pole rigs, I had 4 shallow rigs set up, 2 fixed depth rigs at 6 & 9 inches, a jigger and an over-shotted rig. Over the next 3.5hrs I caught on all rigs as I tried to stay in contact with the fish, pulling the fish closer at 8m. I couldn’t get the fish closer than this and with 90mins remaining the swim was slowing, probably not helped by the bright flat conditions.

A switch back to the paste rig fishing off the end of my keepnet where I had been feeding 4s I had a good run of fish for 20mins, before returning to the caster swim. The rest helped a little but the bigger F1s had disappeared, and I was back on the paste line for the last 30mins, catching really well as the fish had finally properly settled, getting a clean bite quite quickly.

In the end I had a lovely day’s fishing catching two thirds of my weight shallow and put into practice a number of points I picked up following a coaching session with Kristian Jones last year which definately added a few etc fish in the net.

It was a welcome return to form after a poor run and I also had the added bonus of winning from the bonus peg pot, which had built up to £93.

1.    210-14 – Ken Rayner – p9

2.    154-11 – Ian Barker – p22

3.    148-14 – John Pearce – p23

4.    147-  7 – Dan Barnett – p15

5.    138-  8 – Andrew Black – p11