This was a invitational match organized by Andy Mitchell to celebrate his 40th birthday and following cakes at the draw, provided by Andy 17 anglers fished his birthday match. Some good anglers were present, mainly Andy’s Woodland View mob so with a strong field and 17 anglers on the pool meaning most pegs were in I had my work cut out today.

I drew on the far bank 3 pegs down from the Willow pool. I was pleased to draw anywhere along the far bank as these pegs have decent margins compared to the road side bank which are very shallow and slope away and with the wind blowing down to my end of the pool I hoped for a good days fishing. Ash pool like the other pools at the Jam Factory are deep pools but they all have a margin shelf having 4 foot of water on the short pole line and the margins are around 18 inch’s deep with good cover. I planned to fish the margins with meat and a couple of short pole lines up on the marginal shelf with corn and pellets. This pool has a good head of Carp and Skimmers in it and no F1’s so I planned to put plenty of bait in and wait for the Carp to move in. I also set up a method rod just in case I needed to fish the deeper water out in the middle of the pool. With a strong sideways wind blowing I ruled out fishing shallow today.

A poor start!

I set up a 4×14 pole float for fishing two lines at 2+2 one with corn and the another with 6mm pellets in 4 foot of water but with the sideways wind blowing, this float was to light and I should have set up a 4×16 float but I persevered with the 4×14 and so I struggled for the first couple of hours. I think I was the last angler to catch anything! In desperation to put some fish in the keepnets I throw out the method feeder into the middle of the pool and I began to catch some carp straightway but these were small and if I was going to do any good today I needed to catch big carp. So after catching 4 or 5 small carp in only 30 minutes I decided to switch into the margins and wait to see if these bigger carp would move in. The margin needed to come good.

Meat in the margins

I decided to fish the right hand margin, ruling out the left side. I had an angler on the next peg to my left and a spare peg to my right giving me a bit more room. I aimed to fish meat here fishing along the bank with 5 sections of pole towards that spare peg. In all the years fishing at the Jam Factory meat in the margins always comes good. Its just timing and when they decide to move in and have a munch! If they come in early a big weight can be done here. But today they didn’t really come in until the last hour. But those big carp did show up and during that last hour I was able to catch them. So this match was a waiting game. I ended up weighing in 77lb with the majority of this weight coming from the last hour.

It turned out this was good enough to come 2nd overall with the winner catching 107lb again from the margin but he’d caught all day. If they’d have come in earlier I could have topped that weight. But given the strong field of anglers fishing today I was more than happy with 2nd overall. At one point I thought I’d be last. Meat in the margins during the summer months at the Jam Factory really can be a game changer.

Best rig of the day

The margin rig was geared up for big fish. I fished an inline Preston 4×14 edge pole float in 18 inches of water on 0.19mm mainline with a bulk of no.9 stotz’s above a 4inch cut down Preston size 12 XSH Ready rig set up on 19 Orange Dura slip elastic.