5 days of fishing at Ivy House, I'd not had a chance to get up there so wasn't fully au fait with the current trends and what the latest developments Andy has done, as he's always tweaking something. I decided that most lakes would be either a pellet or maggot approach, so that was my mainstay baits.
Its just under an hours drive - as long as I leave before the Bristol rush hour traffic, so an early start every day, the rotation was drawn before, so I knew which lakes on which days, Kingfisher - Heron - Willow - Heron - Old Match Lake.
Happy to start on Kingfisher, its been OK to me in the past, its a canal type lake, but it doesn't have a shelf across, so its tricky to catch over there without getting foul hookers, I tend to start over there and come off it when it dies off or the foul hookers start. It has a decent number of skimmers in and they can be very much needed to make up the weight. As I was so early arriving, I walked the lake and noted that 37 and 39 had plenty of signs of fish blowing, 41 and 42 are decent draws, whilst there wasn't so much activity in the higher numbers.
I drew 45, not my favourite area and I thought it would be tough to compete with Ryan on 41, as well as 37 and 39. I started across on 6mm pellet and had a couple, but it was slow, so I switched to maggots short, this brought a run of skimmers and small carp, but was never going to last, it does come and go, like many canal lakes where you need to switch lines to keep fish coming. I tried pellets down the middle and that was pretty much a waste of time, having just the one fish on it.
I had to go back across and I was catching odd fish, but Steve Hutter on 48 was now catching on caster, as was Ryan on 41 - problem was I didn't have any caster, I am sure if I had some and fished it shallow, I could have pushed for more than the 91.00 and 5 points I achieved. Disappointing start and I could and should have done better, by at least a couple of points.
Tuesday and the first of 2 sections on Heron, which is the newest lake at Ivy and has a head of small carp and F1's - its a busy lake and probably the lake I'd consider my weakest, I'm not overly keen on these fish race lakes, especially when there are no lumps to drag you back in it, if fallen behind, towards the end.
The info was you need to catch the F1's as they are a better stamp of fish, but they do live up to their reputation of pellet lickers, being the frustrating source of many, many missed bites. Peg 24 for me and a bit of space to my left, I set up rigs to fish pellets shallow and maggots short. I started on the maggots short and had a run of fish on this, when it slowed up I tried for 75 minutes to make the shallow pellets work, but the bites were few and far between and I only hit 1/10. I switched back to maggots short and putting some nuggets of GB in increased the number of bites and come the weigh-in I was cursing the decision to spend that 75 minutes where I only put 9lb in the net, ended up with 103.04 which was equal 4th beaten by two fishing caster shallow and two fishing paste, I could/should have had more points had I not be tempted to try the shallow line.
Wednesday - Willow, this one I was looking forward to, proper fishing for bigger carp, the consensus was there were a couple of pegs you didn't want and 33 was one of them, 33 was where I ended up. I was disappointed to find there was nigh on 4' in the margins and the bankside foliage meant that was only a topkit either side (if I had a say in it, the edges would be trimmed back to allow good access to the margins on all pegs). The island point was within easy chuck of a feeder, bomb or waggler.
To cut a boring tale short, I managed on on the feeder and one down the edge after an hour or so, then went 3 1/2 hours without a bite and it really felt like I wouldn't get one. Really couldn't see the point in sitting there when I could see Dave on 23 having one a bung down his edge and I knew my two 8lbers wouldn't be costing anyone any position in the section if I slipped them back and headed home 45 minutes early. Found several cans of Double Punk (8.2%) in the fridge and polished them off. Resounding last in section and maybe I could have fished 16m shallow all day and hoped something swimming past grabbed the bait, but that really isn't for me.
Thursday - Heron again!! So after the caster thrashing on Tuesday, I purchased 4 pints of 'shells' and intended to empty the peg (9) of the pellet licking sods. Peg 9 is one of the widest pegs on the lake, but I felt that only the pole would be quick enough, so rods left in the van.
Started short on maggots whilst I primed the shallow line, left it nearly an hour before going out shallow, had a F1, a couple of missed bites and then the fish backed off and were swirling just beyond the feed, added pole sections and chased them out, in the end, after a couple more fish and some wasted time, they backed off well past the 16m pole limit, so I binned it and went back on the short line fishing maggots. Beaten again by two fishing shallow and a paste angler, although this time the shallow anglers had caught on pellets - I really didn't get this right bait wise and I either need to bin going to F1 lakes or learn how to catch them..... 100.08 for 5 points ( the sheet below is wrong...)
Friday - Old Match Lake
Peg 12, next to Venue owner Andy who was on 10.
I suspect that as there was a breeze blowing towards the far bank, that I would have to fish to the island to catch. I set up a waggler, a method and a straight lead, as well as a rig to fish towards the right hand corner of the island, but at 16m that was a metre or so off it.
No comments:
Post a Comment