Ivy House Open, Sunday 10th September 2017

Travelled up to this with Tony Rixon, I had booked into the canal match when I text Andy to book in, he omitted to tell me it was booked out to a club and we'd all be on the match lake.  I can't understand why some of the locals are reluctant to go on the canal, its plenty of bites, great silvers fishing and those stockies are growing fast.   As there is a chance of this happening if the numbers on the canal are low, I was prepared - or so I thought, when I got into the van with Tony, I said "I've forgotten something, but can't think what it is".  I realised what it was as we got to the fishery, the bag which contained my wagglers, feeders, 12" hooklengths and my reels for the feeder rod. 

So, waggler and pole it would be whatever peg I drew, which after a decent breakfast cooked by Karen, turned out to be peg 20, I have drawn this once before and won from it, so no complaints from me.  Opposite at the windy end of the lake on 10 was Tony.  I doubt I would have set up a lead or feeder on this peg even if I had a reel with me....  I did put up the waggler as it was ready made up, but only had a couple of chucks with it, so no more about it.

As there is a long edge both sides on this peg, I set up two rigs, one with a banded hook, one without and intended to fish pellet one side and maggot the other. A rig to fish banded pellet at 14m and another to fish corn or maggot at the same distance, but at 10 o'clock, to the pellet's 2 o'clock.  Next were two rigs to fish up the shelf in  the shallower water, this is where I caught last time I drew the peg.  Again the thought was to fish pellet one side and GB, with corn/maggot/worm the other.

It can be a slow start on this lake and today was no exception, I fed GB, caster and dead maggot at 14m to the LH side and pellet at 14m to the RH side. The pellet line was completely dead, not even a liner, the GB line did give up a couple of skimmers, but to corn, rather than worm or caster.  After an hour I fed the shorter lines and had a skimmer on 8mm pellet almost straight away, then a couple more on corn, before a carp took a piece of corn.  But as seems typical for me at the moment, that was it, the usual one or two fish and can't keep them coming.

I tried maggot over the 14m GB line and that produced a small roach and a small skimmer, so not what I was looking for.  I had left the edges alone and didn't feed them until after the halfway point, expecting them to come good in the last hour or so.  I had two bites from the edges, one each side, I had one on worm over the pellet side and one on 5 maggots over the dead maggot/GB side, with no other indication that the fish were there.

I had been feeding casters straight in front at topkit + 1 range and in the last half hour started to get bites on that, having a skimmer, a 3lb tench, a carp and a couple of perch, fishing a whole small dendra over the casters. Too little too late, my fish went 42.06 and that was 5th on the day, but not hugely impressive as the turnout was only 10.  Well done to Tony, as he made the most of the wind blowing in at him to win.

Next up, back to Todber next Saturday, hopefully get a few bites.