This week I visited Manor Farm Leisure for their Sunday Open, this week held on Island, Middle and Windmill pools.I drew on the Windmill pool and with just open water in front of me I set up two pole lines at 13 metres in 6 foot of water left and right and a bomb rod if things got tricky. 

Having caught well the last time here a couple of weeks ago on Boundary pool decided on fishing hard pellets on one line and expander pellet over mirco’s on the other plus a short maggot line in front of me at 7 metres. I started with a 4mm hard pellet and fed in a few 4mm feed pellets and after 10 minutes the float dipped and I was straight into a good fish which was a ghosty around 5lb. I great start! So I re-fed the line with another kinder cup of 4mm pellets and waited for a another, thinking I could be on a shed load of feeding fish. But Sadly that Carp was to be the only carp I caught all day. 

I stayed on the hard pellet line for the next hour but this only produced 3 small F1’s and a few roach but at least I’d had a good start compared with all the other anglers on the pool, hardly anything had been caught my them. 

With the bites slowing down now it was time for a change. So I kinder fed a pot of micro’s into the soft pellet line and fished a 4mm expander over the top. This produced a good Skimmer and a few more roach but no more F1’s so after another 30 minutes I decided to go back on the hard pellet line, but this time I stopped feeding the 4mm pellets and changed to feeding small balls of micro pellet, (squashed balls because of the depth of water) This seemed to do the trick and I began catching small F1’s again in between a few roach and skimmers. 

I then hooked a larger carp which I think was foul hooked as the elastic ploughed out. I played it very gently as it looked like the section would be won with a low weight today. I got it all the way down to my top two but then the hook pulled out. 

By this time the match was going into the last hour and I guessed compared to all the other anglers I could see I was doing OK and a section win was on the cards. I felt with the last hour the fish would come on the feed so I stopped feeding the mirco pellet and began to feed hard 4mm pellets. I was right the F1’s did begin to feed in the last hour and I went on to catch several more in the next hour. 

At the weigh in I was last to weigh in my section. I had 23lb to beat. Luckly I placed 24lb 6oz on the scales to win the pool and the section. 

The match was actually won with 70lb off the Middle pool and my section win wasn’t even enough to get into the top six finishers. So today I probably drew on the wrong pool and a section win was only the realistic option. 

Pellet rig – 0.6g Nick Gilbert NG XT Deano Diamond wire on 0.15mm Guru N-Gauge main line. A bulk of no.8 shot 18 inches from the hook length with 3 no.10 dropper shot at 5 inch gaps above a 6 inch 0.13mm Guru N-Gauge hook length with a size 18 SLWG banded hook. Set up to a no.12 Preston hollo elastic.