06/01/24 - Ivy House - Kingfisher

Weight - 6lb 5oz

Catch - 5 F1s, 1 Perch

Weather - Cold start. Sunny start, then cloudy. Light breeze.

Match - Open (10 fished) - 6th overall

Still no car as Volvo is still unable to diagnose the electrical issue! As I didn’t want to miss the Winter League I hired a van for the weekend.

Following a week of torrential rain, it finally stopped yesterday, but that meant it had turned colder. We were all on Kingfisher today which was still coloured after all the rain, but at least the venue hadn’t flooded thanks to the groundwork to increase the height of the bank running along the brook.

At the draw everyone wanted to draw the high 40s, as this has been the form area recently, however I found myself on p38 at the other end of the lake.

I expected a hard match, but to be honest not this hard. I started off fishing tight to the far bank and then the bottom of the far shelf, fishing maggot over Uzit Crushed Expander and never had a bite.

I eventually caught an F1 over my short maggot line, but that was the only fish I had at the halfway stage.

With 2 hours remaining I decided to big pot some ground bait with dead maggot far to my left at 16m, just to try something different and caught 4 F1s on dead maggot, which was a pleasant surprise.

I tried the same trick down my left margin and hooked a big carp, but the hook pulled. I must admit I thought I would have another chance, but it never happened.

A poor day, but I was simply in the wrong area of the lake. Baggy to my right only had 3 carp and 2 skimmers and Paul to my left had 2 fish, whilst the framing weights all came from the middle of the lake.

1.    53-10 – Phil Godding – p42

2.    25-14 – Chris Timms – p45

3.    21-12 – Steve Fox – p44

Silvers

1.      1-12 – Chris Timms – p45