30/07/23 - Ivy House - Heron

Weight - 169lb 4oz

Catch - 77 F1s, 48 Carp

Weather - Bright start, wind and rain later

Match - Open (16 fished) - 4th overall

I was looking forward to this match as I haven’t fished Heron for 8 weeks and you usually have plenty of bites, particularly at this time of year.

I was happy with p6 as you have a little space even when the lake is full and when I arrived I quite fancied it as the wind was blowing into the peg.

On my previous visits paste has worked well for me, so that’s what I started on, over a 2+2 line, but all I caught was small/tiny carp. After 30mins I tried a primed shallow pellet line at 10m and caught a couple of fish, but I didn’t feel I was catching quickly enough.

So, back to the paste line and this time fishing off the end of the keepnets hoping the fish would prefer to settle in the shallower water. This worked as the stamp of fish improved, but it wasn’t long before the tiny fish returned. 

I had switched the pellet shallow line to caster and soon started catching mostly F1s up to 2lb, with the majority at 8 inches and stayed on this for most of the match.

Unfortunately, the wind and rain increased. Whilst the rain wasn’t an issue, the wind meant I was struggling to accurately feed the caster and I needed to switch between my 3 shallow rigs to keep in touch with the F1s, which slowed me down.

In the last hour (6hr) I was wishing I had brought more than the 4pts of caster I had with me. I had kept feeding pellet on my short line expecting a late burst which wasn’t as good as expected.

I had also started feeding down my margins and really struggled to get a bite on corn, but I just think I didn’t get the feed or rig right here, which was a missed opportunity. 

In the end, I was pleased to have caught what I had and really enjoy catching shallow on caster putting into practice some of the pointers I picked up at Tunnel Barn.

More importantly I managed to take a pound off Dave, so some consolation after the Garbo qualifier result.

In hindsight, I think I was a little out of touch with the lake and needed to do better down my margins.

1.    195-15 – Martin Thomas – p13

2.    188-  0 – Neil Thomas – p24

3.    179-  2 – Ronaldo – p22

4.    169-  4 – Ken Rayner – p6

5.    134-  3 – Dave Wilmott – p9