This week Hillview’s Sunday open was just on the Moorhen pool. For some reason only 4 anglers turned up for this one. This was really strange. They had anglers staying in some of the lodges but these anglers were just pleasure fishing during their stay. There were a few regulars having a breakie but these were on a club match on two of the canals pool. I think this was the lowest amount fishing a open on a Sunday since I’ve been going there. But at least we all had plenty of room this week with the winner taking taking all.

Peg 15 on Moorhen is one of my favourite pegs on the complex. I’ve won off it before, so I was happy but I would have preferred some anglers on the opposite bank to stop the fish backing off over there. Anyway my rods were sat at home in the garage as these Sunday matches are normally on the canals so I couldn’t fish over to the opposite bank. Peg 15 has a good margin where I expected to catch later in the match but I started on the pole with hard pellets at 2+3. I was into fish straight away but these were only small stockie F1’s and Silvers. Not really weight builders so I soon came closer to my top kit + 1 line where I’d been feeding corn hoping to find some bigger F1’s and Carp. I was still getting these small stockie F1’s, Skimmers and the odd Roach here. I wasn’t really building a weight yet. So into left margin next where I’d fed a pot of micro’s 15 minutes ago and began fishing corn on the hook. This was much better. I began to catch some larger F1’s here but it was still a waiting game for them and still quiet early in the match to fish the margin. I played around with 8mm and 6mm soft Sonubaits Pro Expander pellets as hook bait but I was mainly catching Skimmers up to 2lb with these. I needed Carp so I went back to feeding small pots of corn with double corn hook bait over the top which proved better and caught more F1’s than Skimmers, some of these Skimmers were touching 2lb though and I spent most of the reminder of the match down the margin hoping for some 10lb+ Carp to turn up. Unfortunately they never did. It was a strange day. The Skimmers really wanted to feed today and I had bites all day and the match really changed into a enjoyable pleasure session and time to test out new tackle!

Testing new kit

To be fair I should have tried fishing shallow at some point but I was really enjoying the sport down the margin and with only 4 anglers fishing the match there wasn’t a lot to fish for. We were just pleasure fishing with a bit of a competitive edge and this match really had turned into a practice session. I’d recently purchased a new Garbolino short margin kit and today was the first time I’d used it and why I spent most of the match down the margin. What a great piece of kit. I only had fish to around 6lb on it but it handled these with ease. Compared to a standard long top kit this short margin kit made the whole netting process a lot quicker and I can’t wait to see how it handles a double.

Best Rig of the day

This was a 4×16 Preston Edge pole float set up on 0.19 Guru N-Gauge mainline with a bulk of no.8 stotz’s just above a 4 inch hook length which was a cut down 6 inch size 14 XSH-B Preston Ready Rig. I put yellow size 17 Preston Dura Slip though the Ultra Compact margin Power top.