Monday, 21 August 2023

18/08/23 - Ivy House - Old Match Lake

Weight - 93lb 4oz (7lb 12oz silvers)
Catch - 19 Carp, 6 Skimmers, 2 Roach
Weather - Dry & muggy, rain later
Match - Twlight Open (7 fished) - 3rd overall

I think the forecast rain reduced todays numbers to only 7. At least we would have plenty of space.

I was disappointed to draw p14 which isn’t my favourite area of the lake and when Dwayne drew p1 and Carl p7 I really thought I would be up against it.

As I haven’t caught much on the tip recently, I decided to solely focus on the pole starting at 14m with paste, which was more comfortable than 16m due to the breeze.

I soon caught a carp, but that was the only one although there were loads of fizzing in the swim and judging by the number of missed bites I think they were silvers.

There were a few carp cruising and I managed one shallow, but no more and I didn’t want to get sucked in chasing shadows.

As the long line seemed to be a waste of time, I thought I would try down both my margins fishing the pallets of p13 & p15. P13 to my left was a little deeper and all I got was indications from silvers and soon scrapped that swim. Instead, I started feeding heavily with micros and 4s much closer to me.

The P15 pallet was much better, by pinging 6s and toss potting pellet, fishing an 8mm I soon had a big skimmer and a couple of carp. I didn’t want to push the swim too early so rested it after each fish, trying a new 5m line or down my left margin, both with paste. This produced a couple of skimmers early before the carp arrived.

The left margin was a waste of time as the fish would come but would disappear as quickly and I didn’t have a single fish from here.

The right pallet turned into my banker. After catching those early fish on pellet, I then lost 3 carp, 2 of which were foul hooked and it was obvious a few fish were present, which prompted a switch to paste. This quickly produced a few better stamp carp, before this line faded.

For a 90mins spell the average stamp of fish was 7-8lb, but the last 90mins all I caught was 3-4lb fish. Weird.

In the end I knew I had the best weight on my bank, however as expected Carl won from the in form p7 and Dwayne was 2nd from p1.

So, 1 out of the money again and it rained for the last 2hrs. I hate packing up in the rain.

1.    118-  0 – Carl Mulford – p7
2.    103-  0 – Dwayne Seed – p1
3.      93-  4 – Ken Rayner – p14

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