01/07/23 - Ivy House - Willow

Weight - 50lb 0oz (11lb 15oz - silvers)

Catch - 5 Carp, 11 Skimmers, 2 Roach

Weather - Mostly sunny and breezy

Match - Open (20 fished) - 13th overall

As there were 20 booked in for today, 14 were on the Old Match Lake and 6 on the island of Willow. A little disappointed to draw p19 on Willow, as it’s a boom or bust peg, but typically it’s not the best.

When I got to the peg, I actually thought it might be OK as there was a bit of breeze, some cloud and the heat of the previous couple of weeks had disappeared.

After an hour it became obvious it would be hard, as I had nothing short on paste or on the feeder/straight lead to the spit. Mark next to me on p20 also struggled to get going eventually catching on the ‘teabag’ next to the island.

Not much was being caught anywhere, so I decided to try for skimmers at 13m, fishing an expander over 4s. Inevitably I hooked a carp on the 2^nd put in. After that I caught a few skimmers, before the line faded a little, so I re-fed and tried my other lines without success.

When I went back out to the 13m line I noticed some bubbles, which I felt were carp so tried paste. This produced 3 carp within 30mins, losing a 4^th when the elastic snapped as I pulled on the elastic. Not happy but I thought there would be a few more waiting for me. Unfortunately, I only had 1 more, plus a couple more skimmers, despite trying all areas of the swim.

In the last 2hrs I was just going through the motions, hoping the carp would turn up over one of my lines, which they never did.

Willow fished harder than expected, as I ended up 3^rd on the lake and wished I had fished properly for silvers instead.

1.    220- 3 – Anthony Flint – p7 (oml)

2.    154- 0 – Stitch – p2 (oml)

3.    122- 0 – Baggy – p9 (oml)

4.    121-12 – Carl Mulford – p10 (oml)

5.    101- 2 – Mark Poppleton – p20 (w)

Silvers

1.    33- 3 – Phil – p3 (oml)

2.    26- 7 – Smiffy – p16 (oml)

3.    22-10 – Phil Gooding – p15 (oml)

4.    1-15 – Ken Rayner – p19 (w)