This week I fished the Hillview Saturday open on the Moorhen pool. It was a very slow start but I caught I few in the end to sneak the section win by 4oz’s !

This match saw all anglers on the Moorhen pool and I pulled out peg 19 from the draw bag. An OK peg at this time of the year with a good margin to fish to. So I set up for F1’s at 2+2 and Carp in the margins and on a top kit plus 1 line.

I began on hard pellets at 2+2 but after 40 minutes biteless it was clear the F1’s weren’t feeding today but Hillview can be a slow start before they come on the feed and I persevered with hard pellets just moving around the peg waiting for them to switch on but two hours into the match and I had a couple of small Tench a Roach and some very small Skimmers. Things weren’t looking good. So into the margin early with 6mm Sonubaits Pro Expander soft pellets and micro’s but they were in yet and I was soon trying 8mm meat on a short top kit plus one line where I caught my first Carp of the day with half the match already gone. It was a bit of a waiting game but a few more Carp followed on the meat line. So I fed the margin with meat and micro’s and tried that. I was now getting bites but not hooking them and I thought soft pellets would be better, I’d tried 6mm’s early for no return but this time I tried an 8mm Sonubaits Pro Expander soft pellets. This worked and I began hooking and landing Carp with the odd F1.

So for the remainder of the match and alternated between the margin and the short meat top kit plus one line. The margin line began to be the better line later in the match and I began to catch better with meat than the pellets. I caught some bigger Carp and this bolstered my overall weight and I thought I had around 50lb at the end of the match which wouldn’t be any good but the scales tipped around to 71lb 10oz which was enough to win the section by 4oz, and was actually 3rd overall. My clicking was way out today.

Best rig of the day

This was the margin line which was an 4×14 Preston Carp Shallow on 0.19mm mainline with a bulk of stotz’s above a size 14 Preston XSH Ready rig cut down to 4 inches. Set up on Preston 15 Dura Slip though a short kit. I used 8mm Sonubaits Pro Expander soft pellets before switching to 8mm meat during the last hour of the match. Feeding micros and a few loose hook baits.