I fished Ivy House on Wednesday, Andy Lloyd and Karen are working hard up there, I think this will become a popular venue on the open match circuit. Sadly my day amounted to 4 bites, which resulted in 2 stockies and a 9lber.
Back to today and after being chauffered to the cafe and venue by aimiable tackle dealer Tony Rixon, there were 16 fishing so we had the Match lake and part of Lake three. I took the first peg from the bucket and wasn't too chuffed when I saw peg 1 staring back at me, its been hard on this peg all winter and today it was one of the most wind affected pegs, which would affect presentation and my ability to get to the island which is a full 16m away.
I set up 4 rigs, one to fish meat at 5m, two rigs to fish pellet at full depth, one 0.3g and one 0.6g - hoping that one or the other would pick up any tow against the wind. Finally a rig to fish banded pellet across to the island should the conditions allow, the same rig would suffice to fish down the end bank.
I had forgotten to bring any meat so we stopped in Wedmore, more in hope than expectation that a village shop would have any, they did, Princes brand, which I discovered is very soft, if nuisance fish were a problem, I doubt if it would survive their attention very long. Paul Elmes kindly put it through his meat cutter, to save me doing it by hand with a knife.
On the all in, I fed a couple of cubes of meat at 5m and some 4mm pellet at 11m. Starting over the pellet with soft pellet I had an F1, then small hybrid, before the wind was making it difficult to present. A switch to the meat line brought an instant response, with a 5lb carp , which was soon followed by another. It was a false dawn and no more bites were forthcoming from this line. I went down the end bank with 16m, not one of my better decicions, I had a couple of bites before the wind caught the pole, blew it into the trees that line the end bank, damaging it in two places.
With no choice but to come short again, I had a look over a caster line I'd been feeding short to my left, this was a non starter. Trying at 10m along the end bank brought a quick burst of 4 or 5 fish on banded pellet, but this was shortlived, I'm sure the fish backed off, but I couldn't follow them without risk of more pole damage or rigs blowing ito the bankside trees.
Neither rig set up to fish the pellet picked up any trip, in fact any trip seemed to be with the wind, it seemed as if the trip was going clockwise round the islands, rather than back against the wind, so those on the opposite bank had the benefit of the trip and the lack of trip just made the presentation more difficult.
With an hour to go I wemt back over the pellet line, which I had now refed shorter at 7m to try and better presentation, that, and as always seems to happen as the match draws to a close, the wind dropped, and I had a run of fish on pellet. The last 15 minutes produced two carp, including the biggest of the day over the 5m meat line, but it was too little to late, as the venue fished extremely well and my 88.10 was not enough to feature in the frame today amd the lowest weight was 63lb, seems like the fish are waking up from their winter dormancy.
1) Martin Lenaghan 155.01 peg 21
2) Martin Rayett 131.03 peg 42
3) Tony Rixon 125.09 peg 19
4) Shaun Townsend 115.05 peg 11
5) Adrian Jeffery 113.02 peg 15
6) Chris Davis 97.03 peg 41
Silvers
1) Shaun Townsend 32.04 peg 11
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