As I’d already broken up from work for a couple of weeks and was flying off to Dubrovnik the next day I was able to fish the Hillview Wednesday open match held on the Moorhen pool this week.

This will be a short post as I’m writing this from memory a week later after coming back of holiday!

I started the match close in on 2+2 with hard pellets which was slow going and I came back to a top kit plus 1 with soft 6mm Pro Expanders hook bait, but again it was slow going. So I went out for 13 metres fishing hard pellets shallow but again nothing was really happening. Weather conditions where sunny, warm and still, with no ripple on the water so not ideal for fishing out into the water and the margins beckoned early today.

I found 18 inches of water to my left margin and began feeding micros and a 6mm Pro Expander soft pellet next and I began to start catching some fish. They were there straight away feeding on the micro’s with swirls and tails already up. I added some nice Carp, F1’s and a few decent sized Skimmers here before it went iffy. So I returned to the hard pellet line for a while but it was clear this wasn’t going to be any good today. I needed to return to the margin. With fish coming in already I switched to feeding corn and micros via the cad pot with corn on the hook. This proved better and I caught some more Carp and F1’s but also Skimmers. So I changed to double corn hook bait hoping to catch some of the big carp in the pool. This worked adding several decent Carp in between the F1’s and Skimmers and a stayed here for the rest of the match.

I weighed in 125lb 6oz which was enough for 3rd place overall but sadly this was a small mid week open that had only 8 anglers fishing so the pay out was 1st and 2nd and to rub salt into the wound only 10lb separated the top 3 weights with 133lb winning the match. Still better than a day at work though!

Best Rig of the day

This was the margin rig which was a 4×14 Preston Carp Shallow pole float on 0.17mm mainline with a bulk and a size 14 (0.15mm) Preston GPM Ready Rig cut down to 4 inches and set up on white Preston 13 Dura Slip elastic through a short margin kit.