31/12/23 - Ivy House - Heron

Weight - 30lb 4oz

Catch - 16 F1, 8 Carp, 3 Gudgeon

Weather - Wet and windy, with some hail thrown in

Match - Open (11 fished) - 7th overall

I was sad to hear of Dave ‘Dodgy’ Downton’s recent passing due to cancer. Dave had a big influence on my fishing as I moved from fishing the occasional club match to fishing leagues and opens.

I first met Dave when he ran a tackle shop in Yate and it wasn’t until he worked at Veals in Bristol in the early 2000s that I started to get to know Dave. He introduced me to my first commercial fishery, namely Ivy House. This also coincided with my decision to quit fishing the rivers competitively as I got fed up with the long walks, poor pegging and some poor fishing.

It was the trips to Stafford Moor I will remember the most as we spent a week in the lodges with Mike Etheridge, John and Rory Andres. I usually ended up sharing a room with Dave and remember one evening hearing giggling coming from our room and a whooshing noise. He was only under his bed chasing flies with a can of deodorant and a lighter. Unfortunately, I lost contact with Dave when Veals closed and he moved to be closer to Stafford Moor.

RIP in Dave, hope you are still catching.

Back to today. As my car is still stuck in the garage, it meant missing a couple of matches including the Ivy House Christmas match. It also meant I had to put back plans to travel up north to see Abi’s parents to later in the week and had no choice but to hire a car for the trip. I kept the car for the weekend, so I at least could do some fishing and decided to fish the open at Ivy House on Heron Lake.

There were 11 of us and I was happy with p11, although the wind blowing left to right was likely to be an issue and I expected it to be a feeder match.

I started on my normal winter approach of fishing the lead and bread to the far bank, which only produced 4 fish for about 7lb in the first 45 minutes, however Alfie on p8 was already on 9 fish.

I only set up 2 pole rigs, a 0.4g Chimp with a bulk and 2 droppers, and a strung out 0.3g rig just in case. When I switched to the pole, I could only fish at 14m due to the wind and a fed a small ball of Uzit crushed expander with maggot. Unsurprisingly the chimp rig proved to be better in the wind and by the half-way stage I was doing Ok with 15 fish, before a heavy hail storm came over.

After the storm the wind dropped a little and I was able to move out to 16m, switching between the 2 rigs to find the best presentation. On a recommendation I have been trying Guru F1 Maggot hooks, but lost 5 fish on the bounce which was really frustrating and prompted me to switch back to a Drennan silverfish match hook. Must say having tried these hooks over the last few matches, I’ve been unimpressed, and they will be binned.

After switching hooks, I started catching again, however the wind had picked up and I felt I had missed an opportunity to make the most of the favourable conditions.

I tried the feeder to the far bank, but only caught tiny carp, so felt I had to stick with the pole despite struggling with the presentation. My struggles were compounded when I lost a big F1 on a snag as I tried to net it, snapping my rig above the float. I managed to fish out the snag, expecting a big branch, but ended up with a keepnet! At least I was able to recover my rig as well.

To be honest I should have framed, as I didn’t fish my best match, but I was just glad to get home in the dry after the soaking we all received.

1.    57-  4 – Glen Picton – p9

2.    48-  0 – Stu White – p17

3.    44-  8 – Alfie Rhodes – p8

4.    44-  0 – Carl Mulford – p4

5.    43-12 – Pete Neate – p21