I left Evesham Jubilee AS in 2017 where I was club secretary for 15 years and this was my return to fishing with them and it was good to see a few old faces on this match. I’d also not been to Tunnel Farm Barn for a good few years to. So I was really looking forward to this match on the Extension pool.

I drew on peg 32 which I found to be quite deep. I planned to start the match on meat short at a top kit plus 1, maggots for later at 2×3, the left hand margin for soft pellets feeding ground bait and casters shallow for the later half of the match.

So I started with 6mm meat on the top kit plus one feeding just a few cubes over the top in about 4 foot of water. This produced a couple of F1’s and a few stockies during the first hour but it was clear by then this wasn’t good to be the best line so far. So I began to feed maggots down the track and my only reward were a few Skimmers. So this didn’t seem right either. An early look in the margin was next with soft pellets and ground bait but this margin was about 20 inch deep and probably to deep for the ground bait to be effective. However it did produce several more F1’s and I persevered on this line for the next 45 minutes before returning the that short meat line, which still didn’t produce. I was itching to try my shallow lines next but I hadn’t seen any F1’s topping so far but I gave it ago anyway. I shipped out to 13 metres with caster hook bait and feeding a few over the top, slapping the rigs around at 24, 18 and 12 inches but again I had little reward and I was back on that margin line for the next 20 minutes. I was going nowhere now I had about 20lb in the keep nets. But looking around the pool every body else was also struggling.

I needed to figure out away of catching some of the bigger F1’s so I began feeding casters quite heavily for 20 minutes at 6 metres where I could throw by hand before trying it. This was a game changer as I began catching them straight away at 24 inches deep on banded caster hook bait. Just leaving the rig in the water and throwing casters over the top rather than slapping the rig. The only problem there was only an hour left in the match but at least I was now catching the bigger F1’s. I trashed the deep 24 inch shallow rig and then had to use my shallower 12 inch rig but the fish kept hooking themselves and I had a good last hour.

This boosted my overall weight which weighed in at 57lb 10oz which was good enough for 2nd place in the match with 72lb winning it. I just wish I’d fed them casters a bit earlier. I may have caught more but maybe I needed to wait for this last golden hour for them to come on the feed. After all I did try it shallow earlier with little return. Anyway it was the first time this year I’ve caught shallow which was enjoyable and it was nice to be back fishing with Evesham Jubilee.

Best rig of the day

This was the two shallow rigs. One set at 24 inches using an 4×12 F1 Shallow pole float and the 12 inch deep rig was an 4×10 F1 Shallow inline dibber pole float. Both set up on 0.17 mainline with a bulk of stotz’s above a 4 inch size 18 (0.13mm)Preston Banded ready rig. Both rigs were set up on 11 green Preston Dura slip elastic though a short kit.