Ivy House Winter league Round Three, Sunday 6th December 2015

I can' believe how mild the weather is still, but I'm not complaining, the gas bill will be greatly reduced and the lack of wear and tear on the winter clothing will help it last another year.

Pretty disappointed to see peg 5 come out of the tin, as I was on peg 6 last match and it wasn't a good area, to make it worse, 5 is in with 20, 2 and 17 which have loads of room and were 1,2 and 3 in the section last time.

With the wind driving straight into my face, it was going to be a tough day, I did get the waggler out of the bag, just in case the wind dropped, two lead rods, one with a bomb, one with a small hybrid feeder. Plumbing up the pole line, I found the slope didn't go out as far or as steeply as it does on peg 6, so at least I could get to the bottom of it, without trying to wield 16m in the gusty conditions.

I set up (rather optimistically) 4 topkits, one for down the edge to my left, towards peg 4, a 0.75g rig to fish overdepth at 9m, a 0.6g rig to fish expander at the same distance and a 0.3g rig to fish through the water, as given the ambient temperature, I didn't think the fish would be rooted to the bottom.

Bait was simply micros, expanders, maggots, pinkies, a few worms and bread.  Starting on bread, second chuck I had a steady pull round and hooked what I thought was a decent fish, when it finally surfaced, it turned out to be a 3lb F1, which had managed to snag a branch about quarter the size of Savernake forest, which had yards and yards of line festooned round it, several pole floats and had obviously accounted for many tales of the one that got away......  That was it for the bread, in fact that was it for any bites on the lead or feeder, not so much as a liner.

After half an hour without feeding I fed two lines, one at 10 o'clock and one about 1o'clock, both at 9m, LH side I fed with GB and maggot, RH line, just with micros, I didn't have as much as a tremor on the bristle with an expander on the hook, but had an odd hand sized skimmer on maggot or maggot and pinkie. I switched to feeding micro and maggot on the RH line and had two small skimmers from here, but it was slow going. I tried the bait was laid on the bottom, just touching, off bottom and the only way to catch was lay line on the bottom and wait.  I didn't have one bite letting the float trip through with the tow (or even dragging slowly against the tow).

With an hour to go, the wind started dropping and I picked up the waggler rod, feeding maggot, it wasn't long before the float buried and a small F1 was netted, followed by a couple of roach and the two biggest skimmers, then a stocky mirror carp about 4lb, but this was too little too late as I could see Andy Lloyd on 17 catching and 20 had two proper lumps for 25lb.  Once again, the small size of the fish I have caught has cost me - not really sure how to change that, I really can't just sit on the tip waiting for a bite.