22/10/22 - Ivy House - Heron

Weight - 109lb 3oz

Catch - 48 Carp, 47 F1s, 2 Gudgeon

Weather - Rain overnight, mostly sunny.

Match - Open (10 fished) - 4th overall

With a Silvers qualifier on the Old Match and Willow Lakes, it meant todays open was on Heron.

The water levels were still down, exposing the marginal shelf. However, with heavy overnight rain and more rain expected Andy said he hoped to be able to top up the lake by next weekend.

There were only 10 of us today and p22 for me. Following last night's rain, I wasn’t sure how it would fish, however there were plenty of fish topping and I hoped to catch a few fish shallow and down the margins.

At the start, I started at 2+2 fishing 4mm expander, initially feeding micros, but soon switched to 4s, catching mostly carp, some of

which were tiny. A switch to my shallow line at 10m fished a hair rigged 4mm over 4s only produced 1 small carp and margin again only produced more small carp. Therefore, I switched back to the short line to keep putting fish in the net.

After 90mins my short line was fading and there were now plenty of swirls over my 10m line, feeding 4s. To be honest I struggled to get the shallow line going, trying all 3 of my shallow rigs to work out the best depth to catch, I even tried banded dead maggot, but could only catch mostly small carp.

So 2hrs (of 5½) into the match I probably had 30lb. To make something happen I started feeding slop and this was a turning point of my match, catching those much-needed bigger F1s, mostly at 8in deep.

As a back-up I fed micros and corn down each margin, fishing corn. I didn’t catch as quickly as I hoped, but the fish I did catch were a better stamp carp and proved to be a useful back up line.

At one point I was catching really quickly over the shallow line, putting 35lb in the net in the last 75mins. In total I fed nearly 4pts of slop, needless to say it was a bit messy.

Overall, a disappointingly slow start which probably cost me the frame, but at least I worked it out – eventually.

1.    130-  1 – Mark Poppleton – p2

2.    127-  7 – Roy Booth – p10

3.    123-15 – Steve Waters – p13

4.    109-  3 – Ken Rayner – p22