Sunday 18 August 2019

Ivy House Open, Sunday 18th August 2019

Travelled up to this one with Tony Rixon, so that meant having breakfast in the fishery café, very nice it was too.

I fancied a draw on the old and true to form, drew on the new canal, peg 25, one peg away from where I had struggled a couple of weeks ago, although that was a very hot and sunny day, so different conditions.



Decided on a simple day, a rig for hard pellet across, found a nice flat shelf which I thought would be perfect to catch carp on, this shelved fairly slowly down to full depth, so I set up a second rig to fish down this slope.

Two rigs set up for down the track, one a homemade 0.4g diamond, with a 0.14 hooklength and a 18 Kaizen hook, with a double bulk, second rig a Hillbilly chump, this with a 0.10 hooklength and a 18 F1 hook, this with a standard bulk and two droppers.  I also set up a margin rig, but apart from plumbing up, it never saw the water.

The peg looks nice and calm in the picture, but that was taken before I tackled up and the wind started!!  On the all-in I potted a few pellets onto the shelf and dropped in, had a couple of small carp straight away, but then the wind was making it just far too difficult.  I switched to plan two, which was feed two lines down the track at 8m, GB and maggots on one line, micros and 4mm pellet on the other.  Also maggots short just in front of my keepnets.

Fishery pellets only here, but you can use your own hookers and GB, I had a 50/50 mix of Burts Exander and Silver Sensation GB (this mixes up lovely and skimmers love it), and some F1 hookers.

I was getting odd small carp and roach, over the GB and I had to keep topping up to get bites, the short maggot line was no good, but sometimes it can take a while to get going.  The wind dropped a bit and I went back over, had one on the deeper rig, but the wind soon got up again.  Whilst it had dropped, I saw a few pin prick bubbles over the GB, so went in on the double bulk rig with a piece of worm, I had a couple of skimmers around the pound mark, so chopped up a few worms and fed them in the next GB top up,  I had two bream on worms, but it was slow going, a switch back to maggot saw three or four bream come to the net and frustratingly, a decent fish around the 4lb mark slipped the hook - that proved costly....

The bream went as quickly as they came, not sure if I didn't feed enough GB, but some small carp moved in after the bream vacated the peg.  I also had a few small carp, roach and a lone perch from the short line and a lively carp around the 4lb mark.  I even had a eel, haven't caught one of those for a long time,

Enjoyable days fishing, the lost fish cost me winning the silvers, but I did sneak the section, with second on the lake.  My prediction of the old canal (Kingfisher) being much better than the new canal (Moorhen) was a bit out today, but it was a good match and its not all about catching huge weights.


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