Silverfox Match Angling: Wednesday 29/01/2014 - Ivy House Open

Wednesday, 29 January 2014

Wednesday 29/01/2014 - Ivy House Open - Match Lake

I Have been itching to get back to Ivy House every since I first fished it guesting in the Veals teams of four back in 2005 when I won the Silvers with 29lb of Skimmers, even more so since Andy Lloyd and his wife Karen (pictured right with some home made cakes provided after the match) took over the fishery at the end of 2013.

Andy has certainly enthused with the chain saw and strimmer giving the match Lake a right “short back and sides” (pictured lower right). Much better I think, and will allow the wind to stir things up a bit. Andy has plenty of plans underway; he has started by stocking a 1000 Carp averaging 1lb in the match Lake.

After a decent breakfast cooked by Karen’s fair hand, it was time to go in the draw bag. It appeared that the favoured peg was 13 which have been winning recent matches with the new arrivals. I pulled peg 17 which according to Andy was a decent Silvers peg.

So I decided I might need some GB, so borrowed a GB bowl from Tony Rixon. I initial set up a 4x14 Jolly but found it a tad too deep at 8 foot for it, so switched to a 4x16. I decided to fish micro and dead red at 11 metres at 12 o clock and GB laced with Pinkie at 1 0 clock at 10 metres. The same float did both lines with only 2 inches separating the depths. I fed the GB line followed by the longer line with a smidgen of wetted micro with some mixed dead reds.

Staring with double dead red over the micro I had a liner first put in, followed by the float dipping which I missed, in again and I hooked a decent Carp which I soon realised was foul hooked with the no 20 - 808 pulling free. I kept a few micros and dead maggot going in through the kinder pot, but it was quiet. So I had a quick look over the GB line with double Pinkie with no indications.

So back out over the pellet and I had a decent run of small Carp which lasted half the match until I had a big fish blowing over the pellet. I was anticipating putting a decent Carp in the net. Alas, after 10 minutes the blowing stopped and so did I catching small Carp. For the rest of the match I struggled, not catching any more over the pellet line. Instead I switched over the GB where I caught three more small Carp and my one and only Silver – a 1oz Ronnie!

My total weight was 39lb 14oz made up with probably the same number of Carp that I had pounds. This left me third overall and last in the Carp pool. One fish from second!

It was good to see that Andy is not defaulting the Silvers – If you win both you pick up both.