As we’re in the final few days of the year. I needed to use up some days holiday before loosing them at work so off to Hillview for the mid week open I went this week. I was especially keen to go as I hadn’t casted a line over the weekend due to Storm and gale force winds.

This was my 1st mid week open at Hillview. These are a bit hit and miss with numbers fishing and due to it being December and well into the winter only 6 anglers fished. But a match is a match and it still had the competitive edge to it. Although only 6 anglers were fishing, these were some very good anglers that all fish the venue regularly. So today we were all on the 3rd canal for the match.

I drew peg 81 an end peg and a noted flyer, although winter fishing does level out these flyers, so work still to be done and I planned a soft pellet and maggot approach. Maggots to my left down the middle of the pool for later in the match but starting on soft pellets to my right hand side, again fishing into the middle of the pool.

So rather than switching to my maggot line than I’d been priming I opted to stay on the 4mm soft pellets. I knew that I was fishing for the odd bite at this time of the year but with pellets this bite would potentiality be a big F1 or Carp rather than silver fish. So I began moving and opening up different lines, just cad potting in a few micros and waiting over each line. This produced several more F1’s in the next hour and two hours in I had caught about 20lb. (Not bad for December)

Then the pellet lines had slowed down and I switched to the maggot line which had now been nicely primed for a couple of hours. I fished a small 4×12 F1 fine rig with spread shotted with just no.10’s for a gentle natural fall and expected to catch some silvers and the odd F1 here for the rest of the match. But it just didn’t work and plan C quickly came, The margins! The angler to my left had just fed and caught a couple of F1’s from his margin, so down the right hand margin toward the end of the pool I went. Nothing came of this and it was a bit awkward fishing a long pole down there. So I give this up early.

Back to Soft Pellets

I’d tried the maggot line now a few times and it just wasn’t producing. So it was back to the 4mm soft pellet and sitting it out for a bite, but as we were going into the last hour now I began to add a few hard 4mm’s in with the micro’s I was feeding and I eventually found a few fish feeding at my original 2+3 line. (I’d seen bubbles there) I caught several more F1’s and had and a nice Carp around 4lb just as the all out was called, which was prefect timing and this bumped my overall weight to 41lb 7oz which was enough for 2nd place in the match.

Best Rig of the day

This was the soft pellet rig which was a 4×12 F1 Pellet pole float set up on 0.17mm mainline with a spread bulk of 5 no. 9 shot 12 inches from the hook loop with 1 no.10 dropper at 6 inches above the loop. The hook length was a 6 inch size 16 Preston SFL (0.11mm) Ready rig. Set up on a Short F1 kit containing Preston 11 Dura Slip.