This weekend saw me fishing the Saturday rather than the normal Sunday so off to Hillview I went. Saturdays Opens are usually on the two main pools rather than the canals. We’d had heavy rain all week so I guessed it would be hard and so it proved for the first half of the match, until I began to catch a few.

The weather had put a few off so we were all pegged on the Moorhen pool this week. The forecast wasn’t to bad as most of the heavy rain from storm Babet had been on the previous two days. So it was going to be interesting how the fishing would be with all the cold water going in during the past week.

As we’re into the last week on October now it was time to fine down the pole rigs with maggots and soft pellets the choosen baits for the day. The plan was to start short on the pole fishing soft pellets over micro pellet with a view to switching to maggots at some point during the day.

These Skimmers and Roach seemed to be the only thing feeding, there was no sign of an F1 or Carp and only a couple of these had been landed during the first hour, all this cold rain during the week had put them off. So after an hour the planned maggot attack was next to be deployed. I plumbed up in deeper water, 5 foot at a top kit + 3 and cad potted in red maggots rather than loose feeding them as I didn’t want to attract any more micro fish but I still caught them! So I began to try and make the Carp and F1’s have a feed by loose feeding maggots with the catapult over a couple of 13 metre lines but the results were the same, very small Skimmers and Roach and after 30 minutes I binned this idea off. I’m not going to fish at 13 metres for micro fish!

Half way through the match now and I had about 10lb of Silvers for my troubles and I was going no where. I was beginning to think the worse and an early exit with a DNW !!

So I binned off the maggots thinking I need to sit it out for the odd carp rather then catching another few pounds of silvers over the next couple of hours and I returned to that earlier Top kit +1 line, doing the same as the start of the match, feeding micro’s and a few 4mms via a cad pot and with a 6mm Soft pellet as hook bait. This time it was all different, the next fish after 10 minutes waiting was a 6-7lb carp! This more than doubled my weight! So my mind was made up I was going to fish short here until looking into the margins for the last hour. The next two put in’s resulted in another two Carp, one being around 10lb. I was now catching Carp. I don’t no whether there had been a change in the air pressure or it was just a case of carp coming on the feed. I hadn’t changed my rig or the feeding but the peg was now producing Carp and the next couple of hours were good mainly catching Carp and a couple of F’1’s. This short line was that good I didn’t even need to try the margin.

I weighed in 76lb 9oz which was enough for 2nd place in the match, which was won with 105lb. It was a funny day today . That cold water going in all week stopped the F1’s from feeding and only silvers could be caught until the Carp came on the feed later in the day.

Best Rig of the day

The was the short pole line rig. I’d fined down now due to the cold weather but Hillview is a mixed fishery so always a chance of hooking a big carp and at this time of year these need to be landed so the Pole float was an Preston 4×14 F1 Maggot in 4 foot of water, set up on 0.17mm mainline line with bulk of no. 9 shot 18 inches from the hook and then a couple of no. 10 dropper shot, above a Pre-tied 6 inch Preston size 16 (0.13mm) GPM Ready rig. The elastic was a white 13 Preston Dura Slip.