28/01/24 - Ivy House - Heron

Weight - 29lb 14oz

Catch - 19 Carp, 10 F1

Weather - Sunny with cloudy periods. Breezy start, calm later

Match - Winter League rd 6 (48 fished) - 4th in section

The final round of the Winter League and my turn for the good pegs on Heron. P22 wasn’t the best, with an average of 5.4pts coming off the peg in the previous 5 rounds, as you are competing with the pegs opposite and p21.

Starting on the lead and bread produced 3 Carp and a F1 in the first 45mins, but I could see Jamie Durrup and Jamie Dixey both catching well on p10 & p11, so I was already up against it.

Switching to the pole at 16m (using a short 4) was difficult due to a side wind that was proving awkward, and I ended up using a bump bar. Feeding a small nugget of crushed expander and maggot, bites were difficult to come by and the fish I did catch were of a smaller stamp. I also lost a couple of fish as I struggled to get decent presentation.

As I felt I was starting to fall behind Jason Hunt to my right on p21, I tried the maggot feeder cast to the island and wished I had tried it sooner putting together a little run of fish before the action died off.

Back on the pole, the wind was starting to die down in the last 90mins and I started catching some better stamp of fish. In the last hour the wind had dropped sufficiently for me to go to the full 16m, using a long 4, where it was very slightly shallower. So far, I had been using a 0.3g maggot rig, with a bulk and 2 droppers, but with the lighter wind a switch to 4x12 rig with spread shotting was much better and I caught some better fish towards the end of the match on single maggot.

It was nip & tuck between myself and Jason, and fortunately my late run of fish meant I beat him by 3lb, but as expected p10 & p11 claimed 1^st (55-14) and 2^nd (38-8) in section and I finished 4^th missing out on 3^rd by 2lb.

To be honest this match was probably a reflection of how my league went. I finished 21^st overall, which was disappointing after finishing 2^nd and 6^th in previous years. However, when I look at my draw’s I had no real flyers, and you need a bit of luck, particularly with the calibre of anglers fishing this league.

The table below shows my draws over the 6 rounds, with my results in green.

Peg	Rd 1	Rd 2	Rd 3	Rd 4	Rd 5	Rd 6
Kingfisher - p37	5	7	2	7	2	4
Old Match Lake - p3	1	6	6	4	7	5
Heron - p17	8	7	4	8	2	5
Moorhen - p31	7	7	5	1	7	3
Willow - p20	2	6	3	8	3	7
Heron - p22	7	8	3	3	6	4

 Top 6 on the day

1.    133-  3 – John Morgan – p46 (Kingfisher)

2.      57-10 – Matt Hamilton – p10 (Old Match Lake)

3.      55-14 – Jamie Durrup – p10 (Heron)

4.      53-14 – Joff Rogers – p2 (Heron)

5.      41-12 – Steve Waters – p13 (Heron)

6.      41-  8 – Simon Duke – p19 (Willow)