Ivy House, 31 July (12 pegs)

Any regular readers of this blog could be forgiven for thinking that Alan  Austin Healy is some sort of match fishing legend however, the truth is that Alan has an uncanny knack of drawing fliers.
This week was no exception as the Knowle West pheasant beater drew peg 24 which, as any Ivy House regular will know, is without any shadow of doubt the best peg on the lake bar none!  Fortunately for the rest of us, he didn't manage to draw the £94 golden peg (that honour was bestowed upon Chris Szackacs on peg 15).
So with the winner already sorted before anyone had put their keepnets in (a good idea to do this before the match starts Chris Gay) it was effectively reduced to an eleven peg match.
Best of the rest was the ever consistent Darren North on peg 10 whose six carp totalled 40lbs 10oz. Darren chose to target the cruising carp with a shallow pellet approach and later switched to the margins with corn (nothing new there then)!
Third place was a tie between Steve Burgess and Rich Britton on pegs 14 and 22 respectively, both weighing in 23-3.  Steve caught two carp on the pellet wag and one good fish at 4m in his left margin where, due to boredom, he was fishing for "ronnies" with corn (didn't have any maggots).
Rich had a couple of smaller carp along with a thirteen pounder and a proper bream.  Unfortunately he found a roach in his keepnet after the weigh-in which would have secured him another £15 pools money but we won't dwell on that as the scalesman (eager to get home to his new wife no doubt) was a bit generous with his weight in the first place!
 The famous Ivy House bream failed to show, probably due to Steve Burgess' heavy duty groundbait attack, but the best  silvers weight on the day went to    Chris Gay who, despite trying at least ten different methods and bait combinations, still managed to avoid the shedload of carp that were swirling in his peg.
For anyone interested Alan Healy (below) won the match convincingly with 97-7 of carp on lobworm fished over chopped worm and caster in the margins with a little bit of pellet fired over the top.  He lost another 100lbs+ to the infamous gully in his peg that connects the match lake with the lake behind.

Full result: 

1. Alan Healy  ... peg 24 ...... 97-7
2. Darren North ...... 10 ..... 40-10
3. Steve Burgess ..... 14 ..... 23-3
4. Rich Britton ........ 22 ...... 23-3
5. Chris Szackacs* ... 15 ..... 23-0
6. Mark Britton ........ 8 ....... 22-11
7. Bob Warren ......... 17 ..... 17-14
8. Ryan Radford ....... 23 ..... 16-2
9. Paul Reed ............ 21 ..... 14-5
10. Chris Gay ............ 13 ..... 13-14
11. Adam Caswell ...... 12 ..... dnw
12. Mark Radford ....... 19 ..... dnw

Silvers:

1. Chris Gay ...... 11-2
2. Bob Warren ... 9-10
3. Chris Szackaks .. 6-8
4. Rich Britton .... 5-13
5. Paul Reed ....... 3-2

 * golden peg