This Sunday it was back to Hillview for the open split over Moorhen and the 1st and 2nd canals. I wanted to avoid canal 2 as sometimes it can just switch off during the later part of the match. So as my hand dipped into the draw bag, peg 56 clung to my hand, Yes you guessed right, canal 2 was home for the day. But an end peg up the shallow end of the pool and at this time of the year, an OK draw and half a chance of a section win.

I’ve done OK off this peg during the summer months, winning the match from here the last time I drew it. It’s really shallow, only 4 foot at it’s deepest and rubbish in the winter when all the fish want to be in the deep water at the other end of the pool. But being the first week in September I was confident of doing well.

The plan was to fish to hard pellets on a short pole, the left hand margin with micro’s and expander pellets and over to the far bank if needed. I started on a Top kit plus one section using a 4×12 strung out rig on the bottom feeding 6mm hard pellets with the same on the band. I began cad potting in 6mm’s but as I was fishing really short I soon began to throw the feed pellets as you can be really accurate when fishing this close to the bank and the noise helps draw fish in. The first hour was average catching around 20lb. I was catching fish but only smaller F1’s and a few silvers. I needed to figure out how to catch a bigger stamp of fish.

I’d been feeding hard 4mm’s by hand into the left margin while fishing out on the short pole line and after an hour I decided to rest it and look for some bigger fish from the left margin using a 6mm Pro Expander and cad potting in fishery micro. Straight away I caught a Carp around 5lb and the another around 7lb almost doubling my weight! Then nothing for the next 20 minutes. Maybe it was the pole over their heads spooking them but I was glad I’d caught a couple of bonus fish. So the plan now was to return to the short pole line as it had now been rested and continue to throw 4mm’s by hand in the left margin for a look after 30 minutes. The short line was now producing some better F1’s adding another 15lb during this planned 30 minute spell before trying the margin again. 2nd look in the margin saw me catch a few smaller F1’s but no bigger carp so I changed to fishing corn , hoping to find some bigger carp but this was no good I caught some small Ide and the odd small F1’s with corn.

So it was back onto the short pole line next and this produced another 40lb during this next couple of hours with some bigger sized F1’s now being caught. So I planned to stay here and look into the margin for the last hour.

Then the wheels fell off. The pool switched off. Canal 2 at Hillview is renowned for this. You can go from bagging to catching hardly anything. Its a strange phenomenon with this pool which can happen sometimes and it doesn’t seem to affect the other pools at the venue. I’d caught roughly 80lb in the first 3 hours and now I was scratching around trying new lines all over the pool but I only put around 10lb in the keepnets during the last hour and a half. All I was doing now was to catch what I could, hoping for a section win. I couldn’t see the canals beating the Moorhen pool now.

When the scales arrived 103lb was top weight off the Moorhen pool so it hadn’t fished that well but this was more than I had clicked. 75lb was the top on canal 2 and I was last to weigh in on the pool. My fish went 90lb 10oz which was enough to win the section and it was the top weight off both canals. putting 4th overall in the match, and tonight takeaway paid for!

Best rig of the day

This was the short pole line where I caught the majority of my fish. This was a Preston 4×12 pole float on 0.17mm mainline with strung out no.9 shot with a cut down 4 inch size 16 Guru SLWG ready rig as hook length. set up on green Preston 11 Dura Slip through an short F1 top kit.