01/04/23 - Ivy House - Kingfisher

Weight - 35lb 8oz

Catch - 18 Carp, 4 F1s, 5 Skimmers, 3 Roach

Weather - Rain to start, dry later.

Match - Open (5 fished) - 2nd overall

More rain during the week and heavy overnight rain which was still falling on the drive down meant there was plenty of surface water with some sections only just passable.

At the draw there were only the 5 of us as a number dropped out due to the rain and concerns about flooding.

To be honest I wasn’t overly concerned where I drew as we all had plenty of room and I ended up on p47. As it was a winner takes all, I decided to concentrate on pellet and corn.

I started tight to the far bank and soon caught a couple of carp on 4mm hair rigged pellet over micros, before I started to suffer from liners. I did try a shallow rig without success, so set up a new swim at 13m feeding a small ball of micros, again fishing 4mm pellet. Whilst I caught a few carp I was getting pestered by small skimmers and roach.

After 90mins I had to adjust the depth of my rig as I original thought the fish hollowed out the bottom, before realising the water level was creeping up. The brook that runs parallel to the lake had burst its bank and it probably came up a foot before dropping a little by the end of the match.

I ended up using my down the track rig to fish tight across and I had a nice run of fish on 4mm pellet over micros. The only issue was I was catching a small stamp of fish and falling behind Joff on p43 who was catching a better stamp.

With 90mins remaining I felt the only way I would catch Joff was to catch some proper carp. I had noticed carp milled around my float whenever I tosspotted some bait, so decided to start pinging pellet to get the fish competing shallow. I never had a bite!

I had also fed both margins with pellet and corn, which produced a couple of better fish on 6mm pellet, but it never got going. Besides the lake was starting to colour up due to the influx of extra water, which killed the swim.

I also discovered that after many years’ service my skee-tex boots had developed a leak.

1.    58- 0 – Joff Rogers – p43

2.    35- 8 – Ken Rayner – p47