Sunday 28/09/2014 - Ivy House Open - Match Lake

Another beautiful autumn day adding to a pleasant drive to the fishery. After breakfast Bela and I had a walk around the Match Lake and noticed that between pegs 22 and 25 there were a lot of big Carp in the margins.

Arriving back in the café we all had a good belly laugh at Andy Lloyd’s expense. Five minutes before the draw Andy asked wife Karen if he could fish the match today. She wasn’t that happy about it and conditioned him doing so on washing up. For the next five minutes Karen stopped calling him Andy referring to him as Andrew!! He managed to fish albeit a very embarrassed red face and full of humble pie!!

Third into the draw coffee tin and out comes peg 2. The last time I was on peg 47 this peg won the match fishing down the LH margin. Although I had come to fish solely for the Silvers I still reluctantly set of a 4x12 jolly with 0.16 hook length to fish down the margin at 7 metres. As I said in a previous blog you need Skimmers to win the Silvers so had planned to fish two lines one at 4 metres with the Ronnie rig and the other at 6 metres for the Skimmers. For this I set up the 4x14 jolly and the Ronnie rig.

No paste today!

I started by feeding all the three lines. The 4 metre line with five big cups of 50/50 Sensas Magic/Black Lake laced with plenty of caster. Then into the 6 metre line a big pot of softened 4’s. Lastly I wasted some bait by feeding a big pot of dead reds and micro down the margin towards peg 1.

I started on the Ronnie rig with single caster loose feeding the same over the top. I had a few better Ronnie’s but it was much slower than anticipated. My thinking was that there were carp around doing their disrupting. But I hadn’t hooked any which would have been usual.

So the one and only look down the margin produced nothing. That said I didn’t give it very long. I kept an eye on the margin but there wasn’t any sign of Carp until an hour to go. I wasn’t tempted at this point in the match.

So I re-fed another five balls of GB laced with caster at 4 metres and tried the 6 metre line with semi hard 4’s on the hook. I started by catching small 3oz Skimmers gradually building to the one pounders leading on to the better Skimmers. I had a very satisfying match catching Skimmers regularly until an hour to go with only two flying off and catching just the one 6lb Carp. I then during re-feeding bounced the pole and the 4’s made a splash which rang the dinner gong for the Carp. I lost four fouled hookers landing another six pounder and two Stockies. I didn’t feed again for half hour until I was sure the Carp had buggered off. In the last few minutes -I had another three decent Skimmers.

My Silvers went 44lb 2oz for a Silver win (my catch upper pictured right).

I was delighted when matey Bela won the match (seen in the selfie with the Silvers winner) with 102lb from peg 29. Bela fished at 16 metres out in front shallow between 12 and 18 inches with hard banded 6 on the hook. Bela swung the rig out rather than splashing. Bela either caught straight away or just sat on it to get bites. Bela fed 4 pints of hard 4’s.

We had a better than usual laugh in the Bar-gar-age sinking a few Pinky Ponks.

A memorable day for both.

Alan Oram and John Cambridge on pegs 21 and 24 where we had spotted Carp in the margins on our earlier walk had some big beautiful Common Carp losing a lot more than they landed.

Full Result:

1. Bela Bakos 102-0-0 peg 29
2. Andy Lloyd 87-04-0 peg 19
3. Dean Malin 78-13-0 peg 6
4. Mike Nicholls 60-06-0 peg 2
5. Dave Young 59-12-0 peg 13
6. Mark Lane 59-04-0 peg 38

Top Silvers:

1. Mike Nicholls 44-02-0 peg 2
2. Rupert Garner 34-0-0 peg 44
3. Jamie Compton 17-09-0 peg 42

Weigh Sheet: