Ivy House Winter League, Penultimate Round, Sunday 7th February 2016

Pissing down rain and wind on the M32 / M4, great start to the day, but after having worked for 6 days and with a further 6 days work following, I was determined to enjoy it.....  Not convinced I actually achieved that though!!

At Christian Malford I stopped to take a picture of the Avon, it had burst it's banks, flooded the fields and was about 12" deep across the road for a couple of hundred yards, the Chippenham side of the bridge.

The sign outside of Ivy House has changed from For Sale, to Under Offer and the new owners were there this morning, cooking breakfast alongside Karen and then assisting with the weigh in, didn't get chance to find out their plans, but they seemed keen to learn about the match organisation.

Into the coffee tin and out comes 38, second in section last match and an area where the fish have been, but today (and my picture does not do the wind justice) it, along with peg 40, was the windiest part of the lake, with a strong, gusting side wind.  A couple of guys were moaning about having the wind in their face, I'd rather that than side on.

I did set up two lead rods given the wind, one with a tiny pellet feeder and a straight lead, as I had time I got a waggler rod out, although it was a pointless exercise unless I could find some tow back against the wind. 3 topkits, one with a Hillbilly Dweezil in 0.75g, these are a really stable float in choppy conditions, another with a 0.6g NG Gimp and a margin rig, as there was a nice depth just over 2 1/2' on the RH side and the lake had a reasonable colour.

The most pole I could hold and that was with some effort and a genuine risk of breakage, was 11m, although 7m was realistic, but this was on a slope.  I fed a line just short of 11m with maggot and another at about 8m with GB, pinkie and squatt.  Started on the pellet feeder, nothing, switched to straight lead, nothing, the pole line fed with maggot, nothing...... and it doesn't get too much better from here on in.  I did start to catch small roach over the GB, but then the guy to my left had a carp (or so I thought) on the lead and I thought catching roach wouldn't get me the points I needed.

Swapping between the lead, a frustrating attempt to fish the waggler, using every trick I know to hold it in place - which failed, as I could not find any trip against the wind - and the pole, I searched the peg for a carp, but there was no liners, no bites, no sign of one. I was getting more and more pissed off with the wind, especially looking over and seeing some parts of the lake becalmed!!

Shouting and swearing at the wind like some old city center wino abusing pigeons, didn't make it stop, in fact it got worse. I did snare a big skimmer on 3 dead maggots in one of the 3 second spells the pole wasn't being blown into a shape never intended by the Daiwa designers.

Come the all out, I was thinking that it would be a close call if asked to repeat the day or go for protracted root canal work....  Another frustration, the 'carp' I saw being landed on the next peg was a foul hooked bream on a pop up rig, if I had stayed fishing for roach, I should have easily caught enough to be second in section, instead of the third place I ended up with, weighing 4.02 to Andy Weston's 5.14 with his 'carp' that wasn't.  26lb won the section from the corner peg 44, which was 4 carp.

Seems my little run of drawing decent pegs has come to a sudden end, as I return to being in the worst section!!  Nothing but a section win and a couple of anglers having a shocker will see me pick up in the league, as I am currently 6th.