Ivy House Open, Tuesday 14th July 2015

Not sure where the time goes, it has been 13 months since my last visit to Ivy House, probably for no other reason than it takes nearly ½ an hour longer to get there than it takes me to get to Viaduct.  If you have the breakfast there, which was very good, and you order the large one, make sure you’re hungry.

Because of the traffic, Tony Rixon had picked me up at 07.00 and that gave us plenty of time to have a look round at the lakes, the first time either of us had seen then since the main lake has been split into two smaller pools, one with 20 pegs and one with 24.  This was a reccy / practise for the forthcoming round of Tony’s float only league, which is this coming Sunday.

Into the drawbag and out comes 21, which is a corner peg, adjacent to the spit, there had been signs of fish there when we’d walked round, so hopefully they’d stay put and feed.  

Plenty of time to set up, so up went a waggler,  a margin rig to fish along the spit (now the end bank of the lake), which tight in was very shallow. A rig to fish pellet/corn at 5m and two rigs to fish at 13m, similar rigs, one with a pellet band, one without.  Finally a shallow rig – not so much as a bite on that, so no more about it.

On the all-in I potted ½ a pot of pellet and corn on the 5m line and a few pellets at 13m.  Starting on soft pellet, I had a couple of small skimmers, but was missing too many bites, so switched to 6mm hard pellet, the difference was amazing, the bites stopped.  Back on the soft pellet and unhittable bites again, the same with a bit of corn.  I went back to the hard pellet and persevered, a long wait resulted in a 3oz skimmer, I did foul a carp and lose it, so had had a thrash around shallow for no reward.

I had been feeding some 8mm pellets further out and had a look over them with the waggler, again nothing doing.  Switching to the 5m line which I had kept topped up, brought a constantly dancing float, as small fish ragged whatever bait I tried.

Then along the spit at about 25m-30m I saw some swirls, so I shortened the waggler to 12” and cast tight to the bank, feeding 8mm pellets.  This brought me a couple of fish, but they were backing away after each one was caught, the 12” below the float rule was a hindrance, as I got snagged up a few times, but if I didn’t cast tight in, then I wouldn’t get a bite.  I had fed groundbait and dead maggot at 14m, between two (the only two) clumps of grass on the end bank, but even though I saw fish over this, I didn’t get a bite.

I started to feed 8mm pellets at 16m along the bank, past the grass clump and the fish did move over this in the last 90 minutes and I had a decent spell, catching fish up to 9lb, I basically had to lay the rig up the bank and wait, as every time I tried to fish out from the bank in 12”-18” of water, I would get liners and foulers.  Shame those fish wouldn’t settle sooner, as I might have done a weight to push the winner, as it was, my 71.11 was enough for 4^th and a pick up, with Tony coming second it was a reasonably content van on the way home.

Todays weigh sheet.