Tuesday, 23 May 2023

21/05/23 - Ivy House - Heron

Weight - 139lb 7oz
Catch - 65 F1s, 33 Carp, 1 Chub, 1 Gudgeon
Weather - Warm and sunny
Match - Tackle Den (19 fished) - 1st overall

I decided to join Tackle Den club as they regularly have 20 or so attending their matches and to be honest, I’m getting a little fed turning up for opens with only a handful anglers attending.

Today we should have had a full house of 20, but match organiser Steve Venn snapped his Achilles trying to get his van started this morning!

I was happy with p4, as it provided some space and a good left-hand margin. The weather forecast was for warm and sunny conditions, which hopefully meant a day’s shallow fishing.

On the all-in I started on paste at 2+2 whilst priming a shallow pellet line. After 40mins I had 7 fish before it faded. Switching to the pellet line feeding 4s, fishing a hair rigged 6mm I had to start at 14m and after a slow start caught steadily.

Within an hour the swim was fading, so switched to feeding caster. Before trying the caster, I moved back to the paste line, which quickly produced 7 or 8 fish before slowing.

Back to the shallow caster line and I spent most of the match on it, gradually pulling the fish from 13m to 8m. At the halfway point I was up to 42 fish and the swim just got stronger, catching some big F1 up to 2lb.

With an hour remaining the F1s were becoming tricky to catch, I could see them on the surface, but in the bright conditions they were starting to shy away from the pole.

A switch to my margins where I fed groundbait and micros fishing worm proved to be disappointing, not catching as quickly as expected, so I ended back on the shallow caster. The rest had helped but I had to keep changing the rig and presentation to keep the fish coming.

Those F1s really are tricky buggers, however they are really enjoyable to catch. It was also nice to feed a bit of bait, getting through 3pts of casters, plus a pint of 4s.

1.    139- 7 – Ken Rayner – p4
2.    108-10 – Dan Barnett
3.      87- 0 – John Pearce
4.      85- 8 – Cliff Dutton
5.      82- 4  - Ian Barker 

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