I was looking forward to my first visit to the New Canal at Ivy House, having been promised "bites all day" by Tony Rixon. It looks like Andy Lloyd and Karen are still working hard and improving the fishery, which I'm sure will get even better. The only downside to this fishery for weekday matches is the time it takes to get there, its about 4 miles further than Viaduct, but takes 80 minutes instead of 50 minutes, due to getting out of (and back into) Bristol in the mornings / evenings, the rush hour seems to last for about 4 hours twice a day now.
Only eight today, shame as I think some of these commercial lakes don't benefit from big gaps between anglers, giving fish space to back off into if they feel pressured. I would have fancied one of the end pegs, but as usual I didn't manage to draw one of them, nearer the middle being my home for the day and it was one of the narrowest pegs on the lake, with a three peg gap between me and Tony, who had managed to get one of the widest pegs on the lake, probably 3-4m difference between the two pegs.
I had been told that the lake held skimmers, small tench, F1's and stockie carp, with bigger specimens up to 10lb. I had brought 4 and 6mm pellet, both hard and soft and a couple of pints of maggots. My mine approach was going to be pellet and I started on 6mm hard pellet at 6m, first 5 drop ins saw 5 bites, with a roach, tench, carp and f1 landed, the line then went dead, not another indication. A switch to a line at 9m feeding micro's and fishing 4mm soft pellet saw me have a nice run of small carp and f1's with the odd tench and two skimmers, before this line also died.
I am sure, as I have already mentioned, this fish moved out of the narrow part of the peg and I only managed the odd fish from the end of the second hour, until the end of the match, these I am sure were fish moving through the peg, as I lost all indication of feeding fish in the peg.
I had kept a very short line fed with maggot, all this was producing was tiny roach, so for the last half an hour I upped the feed and did manage a 12lb carp from here on double maggot, it took 20 minutes to get in on 0.10 and an 18 6313 and that saw the match out.
A disappointing 4th place with 63.10 of which at least 40lb was caught in the first two hours, disappointing as I felt I had fished and fed a tidy match, I have no idea how I could have stopped those fish backing off into the gaps.
1: Tony Rixon 111.10 peg 11
2: Ron Hardiman 73.02 peg 2
3: Phil Harding 70.12 peg 13
4: Chris Fox 63.10 peg 7
5: Shane Turner 47.07 peg 17
6: Keith Turner 31.11 peg 15
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