Ivy House Champ!

Sunday was the very cold and windy final round of the Ivy House Silvers League. I was really hoping for a nice peg on Kingfisher, but instead I’ve drawn a bit of an iffy peg 14 on Old Match Lake. It’s not the best of areas and quite shallow everywhere, so I decided to just get my head down on the small fish most of the day.

I’ve fed short and down the edges with groundbait, maggots and pinkies and caught mostly little roach here (and the obligatory single Gary the gudgeon). Swapping to casters brought a few skimmers short, before the carp muscled in, which convinced me to revert back to pinkies. I also fed a couple of 13m pellet swims with groundbait and micros and had a dozen skimmers on expanders, but most of them were really tiny bottle tops.

Groundbait was my leftovers from Saturday’s Fish South Silvers Final, which was the trusty Sonubaits Thatcher’s and F1 Original combo. I’ve not fed a great deal of anything today, though, as the fish didn’t seem to want a lot of loose feed with it being so cold.

After a busy, chilly and windswept day I was surprised to put 16lb 9oz on the scales to win the lake. Nick Milsom won Kingfisher with 19lb 3oz and Gary Etheridge was 2nd with 18lb 8oz. There were a couple of 14lbs on my lake, too. Not huge weights by some fishery’s standards but nice fishing and plenty of bites on a cold day.

Really pleased with my result as it meant I ended up with a perfect 5-point score to win the league. Giving the fishery’s dog, Boris, a good-luck stroke every round seemed to help!

So, a really great weekend’s fishing to end this year’s silverfish campaign on a high! A big thanks to Andy and Karen at Ivy House Lakes for running such a nice and friendly league at a great venue.