This Sunday the Hillview open was on the 3rd and 4th Canals. It was a hot one with the temperatures forecasted to nudge 30 degrees, so armed with plenty of sun cream and the brolly if it got to hot, off I went. But would the fish feed in the hot conditions?

I was looking forward to this match as I hadn’t fished the canals at Hillview for a month or so. I drew on peg 73 on the 3rd canal which is the better one of the canals this year. The plan was to start shallow with Casters over to the far bank as this peg has a great mud line and a short pole line with hard pellets on the bottom plus the edge to my left where I would fish micros and soft pellets. I also fed a shallow edge Caster line further along the bank towards the next platform.

Starting Shallow

So at the all in I began fishing a shallow Jigger set between 12 inches to 6 inches over to the far bank with Caster hook bait and feeding Casters via a catapult. This attracted a few Ide at first and a few stockie’s and it took a good hour before I caught some better F1’s but it wasn’t as good as I wanted. So I began feeding Casters along the left bank towards the next pallet and I alternated between these two Caster lines adding a few more F1’s. It was OK doing this but the fish weren’t really having it shallow today and I knew hard pellets on the short pole line can be great on these canals, so half way through the match now, I switched to hard pellets.

Hard pellets short

Prior to switching to hard pellets I had primed it for 30 minutes, loose feeding a few 6mm’s and I started at 2+2 and it wasn’t long before I began to catch F1’s and small Carp around the 2-3lb mark with the hard pellets. I had a good couple of hours here. Resting the line a few times while a tried shallow over to the far bank and down to the next pallet. But these shallow lines weren’t as good as the pellet line and this became my main focus now. As we went into the last hour or so I tried the edge micro and soft pellet line were I hoped to pick off some bigger carp. I caught straight away here but only small fish were there and no bonus fish so a returned to the short line but I came in shorter at 2+1 this time hoping to still catch the 2-3lb F1’s I’d been catching but with a better chance of a few bigger carp as it was now late afternoon. I didn’t catch any bigger one’s but my catch rate was good now and I stayed here for the rest of the match.

The 3rd canal (mine) had fished the best out of the 3rd and 4th canals. I’d definitely been on the right pool as the top weight of canal 4 had been 98lb and I knew I had a tonne+ weight. As I walked up the bank to the top end of my pool to watch the weigh in, this end had fished fantastic with flyer end peg 81 winning the match with 229lb and then a 208lb before the scales arrived to me. My fish went 138lb 13oz and this was 3rd overall. But no pick up for me as at Hillview they pay out the winner and then section winners and as the winner was on my pool, the 208lb weight picked up the section money. I still enjoyed the day though catching a tonne+ weight. Hillview never disappoints !!

Best rig of the day

This was my short hard pellet line which was 3.5 foot deep and I used a 4×12 Preston F1 maggot pole float with strung out no.9’s and no.10 split shot with a cut down hook length, a 6 inch Guru size 16 (0.13mm) cut down to 4 inches SLWG banded ready rig cut down to 4 inches and this was set up on Preston green 11 dura slip elastic through an short kit.