Welcome to the Updates For May – June 2015 – Ivy Lodge Carp Fishery catch reports and updates blog. We hope the blog will interest you and help to keep you up to date with what’s happening on the banks. All Members please feel free to send us your pictures and catch reports and we’ll try to add them to the next monthly reports blog. As well as your reports we’ll be contributing our own catches from sessions too. Please send your reports in an email to ivylodgecarpfishery@yahoo.co.uk with the email subject “Pictures” and add your pictures as JPEG attachments. We’ll do the rest…..

A COLD START TO THE SUMMER

Unfortunately the weather in May was not as it should have been lots of wind, rain, frost and even some hail and snow good old Northern Ireland summer! With the weather being as it was the fishing was very unpredictable with good days and bad. Plenty of fish were still caught though when the conditions were right. The pole and paste seem to have been the best tactics as well as the method feeder and krill pellets any good weather saw the fish up in the water column and fishing on the surface produced good results with the new floating carp pellets being the top choice of bait.

The new floating pellets are available in the shop and we want to see all anglers wanting to fish the surface using these rather than dog biscuits as they are better for the fish.

Summer finally arrived at the start of June and the carp have spawned successfully with the first few good days of sunshine warming the water. The fishing started to become more consistent after the spawning with good catch rates for all anglers. Hopefully that should be things starting to settle down for the year and sport should become steady from now on. The rest of the species will all be due to spawn over the next month and all anglers are reminded not to be disturbing the fish when this is happening. We will inform you when you arrive if fish are spawning as the different species will spawn at different times. If there are fish spawning in the margins of your peg please avoid this area and fish out in open water and let them get on with it in peace let’s face it you wouldn’t want someone chasing you with a hook when your performing (well most of us anyway lol).

We are unfortunately still finding a lot of rigs and line in the trees please remember if you catch the trees tell us (it happens us all) and we can remove the line and rig.

Pole elastic should be at least a 12+ preferably 16+. Daiwa Black hydro is ideal for open water use and purple or red for margin work where you need to keep the fish out of the lilies etc. The fish are getting bigger and stronger and there is no point hooking them if you can’t land them or if it takes you longer than it should all it does is damage the fish or leave them trailing a rig. Pole rigs should also be at least 5lb breaking strain. We will be checking elastic and rigs regularly.

CHARITY DAY SATURDAY 1^st AUGUST

Our annual charity competition and bbq will be happening on Sat 1^st August with all proceeds going to Mindwise mental health charity. We are going to run the competition in the morning from 9am – 2.30 with a half hour break for lunch from 12 – 12.30 and limited to one rod or pole per angler. Elaine is going to put some food together for lunch. There will be a huge demand for places this year so it will be the first 18 anglers to put their name down although if some of you wish to double up that is fine. There will be prizes for the biggest fish on the day. The entry fee is £10 including lunch and bbq. The bbq will start at 6pm until 10pm £5 per adult + donations kids free all friends and family members welcome. Please let us know numbers attending in advance so we know roughly how much food we will need. We also need a few volunteers to help with the weighing so anyone who can help on the day please let us know. We look forward to seeing you all there.

Reported catches include:

Frankie 28 carp, tench and bream

Tommy McAlinden 33 carp and tench

Steve Wright 31 carp and tench

David Crumley 18 carp and tench

Willy o,neil 24 carp, bream and tench

Jonny Nesbitt 27 carp and tench

Barry Gorman 21 carp and tench

Nigel McKinney 30+ carp

Tommy Black 30+ carp and tench

Alex Blair 39 carp on the feeder

Les Cullen 20+ carp and tench

Paul Megivern 16+ carp and tench

John Tucker 16 carp and tench

Niiiiaaaaalll O’Hanlon 21 carp, tench and bream

Darren Halley with a 9 lb common

Tim Murphy with a 5 lb common off the surface

Barry and Cody Gorman with a 4 lb common

Stuart Heasty with a 5 lb common

Carp spawning at Ivy Lodge June 11th 2015

Carp spawning at Ivy Lodge June 11th 2015

Carp spawning at Ivy Lodge June 11th 2015

Carp spawning at Ivy Lodge June 11th 2015

Tree/snag at peg 5 goes missing……anyone seen it???????

No excuses now for catching the trees!!!

Reinforcements!!!

Large snag removed from island now becomes firewood!