This week I had an Evesham Jubilee AS club match on the House pool at Tunnel Barn Farm. I really was looking forward to this match but when I realised I was in Hyde Park, London, watching a Kylie Minogue concert the night before, meaning I got home at 2.00am, getting up a 6.30am to travel up to Tunnel Barn Farm was always going to be tough but I was glad I made the draw!

I planned a pellets and casters approach for this match, hoping to have a lovely day fishing casters shallow. I didn’t really have any decent margins to fish to, but I hoped to find some F1’s up against the reeds to my left side.

I started on hard pellets on a short top kit plus one line out in front of me, fishing and feeding 4mm’s. I began to catch F1’s straight away, catching around 15lb during the first hour while priming that caster line up against the reeds to my left. I began to think it was going to be a pellet day but after the 1st hour this line dried up and it was time to try the caster line.

So I spent the next 40 minutes fishing casters shallow up against the reeds but this proved fruitless catching just a couple of Skimmers and a rethink was needed. I tried maggots next straight out in front of me at 2+3 which produced a few F1’s but mainly Skimmers and Perch and these weren’t going to build me a weight so that was also binned off and I spent the next hour struggling trying different lines around the peg with maggots, pellets and casters with little reward. Pellets weren’t working anywhere now and I decided to attack the peg with casters on the bottom in about 4 foot of water straight out in front of me at 2+3 with the view to shallowing up if I was missing bites and this is where I stayed for the rest of the match, trying different depths but the bottom rig proved to be the best. I was catching small F1’s and Skimmers here, so I just got of head down now and tried to catch as many as I could. The fish were small but I was catching fish.

I caught a lot of fish but being on the small side I tipped the scales around to 57lb 11oz which was enough to pick up the section money. I followed the scales around to the far side of the pool where it seemed the bigger F1’s had been caught. Anyway I enjoyed the day and I didn’t feel to tired after the late night and early start. I nearly didn’t go but glad I did.

Best Rig of the day

This was the casters on the bottom rig which was a 4×12 Preston F1 maggot pole float in four foot of water set up on 0.17mm mainline with strung out shotting of 4 x no.9’s and 2 x no.10’s above a 4 inch (0.13mm) Preston size 16 banded GPM Ready rig set up with Preston green 11 Dura Slip elastic though a Short F1 top kit.