17/12/23 - Ivy House - Moorhen

Weight - 26lb 14oz

Catch - 17 F1s, 8 Carp, 4 Skimmers, 3 Roach, 2 Chub, 1 Perch

Weather - Mild and overcast, with a south westerly breeze

Match - Winter League - rd 4 (48 fished) - 1st in sectio

No fishing last weekend, as my car had developed an electrical issue and it’s now in the garage. Fortunately, Volvo organised a hire car so I could at least fish this weekend and hopefully I will have my car back before the next weekend.

Today was the 4^th round of the Winter League, which so far hasn’t gone my way, and it was my turn for Moorhen, which is a 9 peg canal lake. Typically, in the winter you need to draw either end of the lake and avoid the middle, so I was less than impressed to draw smack in the middle which is also the narrowest part at 13m and so far this series 5^th in section has been the best result.

The only solace I could take was the space peg to my left. The first 30mins was spent dobbin firstly bread and then maggot along the far bank, catching 1 tiny chub. I tried feeding maggot, but this only produced a roach. In the meantime, everyone to my right were catching from their far banks and to be honest I thought a bad day was on the cards.

A switch to fishing at 13m to my left at the bottom of the far shelf, feeding a tiny nugget of Uzit Crushed Expander and micros, fishing a 4mm expander flavoured with Uzit Pineapple Cloud (a new product with 8 flavours). After a slow start, I started to catch a few F1s and the occasional bigger carp, feeding a tiny nugget of feed every put in. I was starting to enjoy my day and whenever the swim started slowing, I would move slightly further left.

With 2 hours remaining I felt I was doing OK as everyone had stopped catching, except for Andy Burns to my left on p29 who was catching across by the reedbed, including some better sized carp and was probably ahead of me.

My swim had slowed, so I tried my short maggot line which I had been feeding since the start, but this only produced a couple of silvers and felt I needed some carp to catch up with Andy.

I started fishing tight to the reeds, again fishing pellet over crushed expander/micros and fortunately started catching until the end, again moving further left to stay in contact with the fish.

It was a pleasant surprise to win the section as Andy came 2^nd with 22- 6 and Jamie Durrup on the end peg 35 had 21- 3.

1.    71-  8 – Matt Hamilton – p21 (heron)

2.    58-  2  - Rob Guppy – p20 (heron)

3.    57-  0 – Dave Strafford-Way – p2 (heron)

4.    54-  4 – Phil Godding – p46 (kingfisher)

5.    52-14 – Nigel Reeves – p39 (kingfisher)

6.    52-  6 – Steve Martin – p22 (heron)