Tuesday costcutter, ivy house fishery

Fancied a change today, so me and Chris Fox found ourselves on the m4 towards Swindon, with the schools shut for Easter it was an easy drive so we arrived in plenty of time for breakfast ,(4.25).
Turned out there were 18 fishing so Andy put 12 on the main lake and 6 on the canal, as some of his regulars were moaning about the canal being in Andy asked for volunteers to go on the canal, so I plummed for the recently renovated canal as I was guaranteed plenty of bites, as did Chris, into the draw tin and I pulled out ball 4, so a shot fish walk. I had for company Ralph on 2 and Val on 6, both regulars so they had a bit more idea than me.
I set up rigs to fish maggot on my topkit in front of my net's and corn off to my right on top 5 with corn, a deep pellet rig for down the middle in 5 1/2 foot of water and a couple of pellet rigs for across, one against the grass and the other just down the shelf a bit.

On the whistle I fed corn to my right a big handful of maggots just past my net, fired some hard 4mm pellet across and fed the same size by hand down the middle, which is where I started, it didn't take to long to get a bite and land a small carp, and they are quite small, between 3 and 5 to the pound, for some reason the bites down the track didn't last for long, so I was soon going across with the slightly deeper rig, bites straight away, but I felt they were shallower , so I went onto the against the grass rig, and again had bites instantly, but after a while and feeding with a catty , they were coming up in the water, so it was off the box and I made up a rig to fish just over half depth, a fishery rule is that you must fish with at least 12 inches deep, which at times is to deep, especially when you can see better carp slurping off the grass, but that's the rules and its the same for all.
I was getting a bite or indication most drops but these small carp can be a bit tricky at times, I was told you really needed some bream to boost your weight as there are plenty in here and as they go to 4lb one fish is worth a lot of small carp, so during the last couple of hours I kept trying the two short lines and fair enough I did have a few good bream up to 4lb, by the end I never had a clue as to what I had caught, I have enough gauging big fish at the mo, so these little fish I had no chance, I did get three better carp up to 3 1/2 lb and some better f1 type thingy,s , but I was still surprised when my carp went over 54lb and my silver's over 23, for first on the canal, being a costcutter Andy pays only sections with first for biggest weight and top silver's weight.
Weigh sheet for the match below.

So a nice day if not a bit busy, Andy runs a costcutter every Tuesday, normally on the main lake lake unless numbers dictate, but he does run a costcutter every Thursday on this canal.
He also has some opens over various lakes so give him a ring to book in.
I'm running an open again at Landsend on Sunday still got a few spaces so get in touch to book in, also I am going to run a costcutter at the fishery on Tuesday, so again give me a ring to book in, both matches will be a 9.30 draw.
Back to ivy house and Alan oram was top weight on that lake with nearly 38lb of skimmers and one lone carp for a 44lb total, pic below of Alan playing a carp which took his bare hook while shotting his float, it was considerably bigger than the one he caught in the match.

After th a match we were treated to some of Karen's finest homemade scones with fresh cream and jam, definitely a 5+ for that one , thanks Karen,