In recent weeks I’d not had a lot of success with my fishing. My last two matches have seen a last place and a DNW packing up early, something that I never do, so it was finally good to get a result and get the smell of a nice brown envelope back. I didn’t fancy peg 56 on the 2nd canal at Hillview as its normally the worst of the canals at Hillview and peg 56 is the wrong end, being very shallow but an end peg so there was always a chance of catching a few.

At the draw I was asked which peg I didn’t want and promptly said nowhere on the 2nd canal and definitely not peg 56 so when I pulled out peg 56 my heart sank and with little confidence from my recent results it was looking like it would be just another days fishing and thanks for coming. Peg 56 was an end peg but very shallow compared with the rest of the canal and plumping up the deepest area was 3 foot close in and then a gradual slope shallower as you go out to 2 foot near the far bank. As we are now in June and with the water temperature up I hoped a few fish would be in the shallower water rather than heading down to the deeper end of the canal as they normally do. So I planned to start on pellets over to the far bank and pellets on a short pole line before switching to a shallow caster lines later in the match.

So at the all in I started fishing over to the far bank with a hard pellet over a few cad potted in micro’s. I began to catch straight away catching a few small Tench and Ide and a couple of F1’s but these fish were a small stamp and not weight builders and after 40 minutes I stacked this off a came short where I’d been feeding pellets on a top kit plus one line. I began to catch fish here straight away and these were a better stamp of fish. Proper weight builders. Fishing short like this means you can feed very accurately without the need of a cad pot and the fishing is much easier than fishing at 13 metres to the far bank. So I planned the next hour or so fishing here before the switch to casters shallow later. During this time I caught around 30lb of F1’s and the odd silver fish and looking down the pool most anglers seemed to be struggling so I was happy. I was catching a steady run of fish, something I’d been struggling to do in recent weeks! I thought this was a good start to the match and I began feeding a caster line in the left margin towards the next pallet for later while I was on this short pellet line and after 40 minutes I switched to casters. This didn’t work though, just one foul hooked F1. I tried it for 20 minutes before retuning to the short pellet line. (it was good to rest it anyway) The pellet line was still producing and I planned to stay here for another hour while still feeding the caster line and I added another 20lb of F1’s and a few silvers. So another hour pasted and I tried the caster line again but it was no good. I felt it wasn’t a caster day and retuned to the short pellet line again but it was still good to rest it again. I decided to keep my head down now on this short pellet line for the rest of the match but began to feed a new pellet line to my right now as a back up line if the current one slowed down and now for the rest of the match it was pellets. I was catching on the bottom with these pellets in 3 foot of water with a strung out rig. I had a couple as the rig sunk though the water but most fish were hooked on the bottom. They weren’t coming up in the water but as it was only 3 foot deep I didn’t need to come up and down in the water, the strung out rig covered all the bases. This pellet line continued to be good and I stayed here for the rest of the match adding more F1’s and a couple of small Carp.

Come the weigh in I was last to weigh in on my canal with 83lb to beat. I reckoned I’d got just over the tonne and these fish tipped the scales to 117lb 4oz. I’d won the section so a section envelope at the least. Something I’d not seen in recent weeks and so I was happy. Canal 1 was next to weigh in. This normally is the better canal and I expected the winner to come from here, but no the best weight on there was 85lb so I won the match.

Best rig of the day

This is was short pellet line rig in 3 foot of water. I used an 4×12 Preston F1 maggot pole float on 0.17mm mainline with a strung out shot of 4 no.9’s and 2 no. 10’s above a size 16 (0.13mm) Preston GPM 4inch banded ready rig. balanced with green Preston 11 Dura slip though a short top kit.

So I’ve broken the bad run. Several weeks of poor results always seems to question whether your doing it right. It can be desponding but we all go though it. You just need to keep getting back on the saddle and when it all goes right it makes you feel a whole lot better.