20/08/23 - Ivy House - Heron

Weight - 240lb 0oz

Catch - 189 Carp, 8 F1s

Weather - Mostly sunny

Match - Open (9 fished) - 2nd overall

After the recent high attendances on Heron, we only had 9 today, but that at least meant it would likely be a high weight affair. I was disappointed see p17 staring back at me, as I had hoped for a day catching F1s shallow on caster. Unfortunately, there aren’t many F1s in this area of the lake and there tends to a smaller stamp of fish for some reason, probably because the prevailing wind blows down the other end.

I started on paste off the end of the keepnet and caught a couple decent carp, but the majority were less than 1lb and I only stayed on this for 30mins.

I had been feeding 4s to my left by my keepnets and switched to fishing paste and was soon catching a better stamp of fish.

I had also started feeding caster at 6m with the intention of catching shallow, however I soon had 5 ducks waiting for each feed. I think they did me a favour though and decided to feed caster down my right margins. A bit of a gamble on my part as I have struggled to get my margins to work on this lake, however other than the 1^st 30mins I spent all match on my top kit down each margin, paste down the left and caster to the right.

Typically, I spent 1-1½hr on each swim, only swapping when I experienced a lull in sport.  At the half point of the match, I was up to 85 fish and the caster swim in particular just got stronger.

The paste line produced the better sized fish, but also a few tiny carp, whilst the caster fish were a more consistent stamp.

In the end I was happy with 2^nd from the peg and speaking to Mick afterwards who won from p6 he said he had 175ish fish, so the stamp of fish in my area did go against me. That said a PB for Ivy House and more lessons learnt.

1.    247-  8 – Mick O’Brien – p6

2.    240-  0 – Ken Rayner – p17

3.    203 – 0 – Daniel – p3