This week I returned to Hillview for the Sunday Open, 14 anglers all on the Moorhen pool, so tightly pegged. I drew peg 4 in the corner. It was a hot day but at least this corner had a little shade for most of the day and I had a really enjoyable day catching F1’s and the odd Skimmer to win the match.

The plan was to start on hard pellets on the bottom over towards to the aerator to my left and also to feed pellets on my top kit line around my keep nets. The righthand margin was there for later if needed but I planned to fish casters shallow later into the afternoon, a section further out into the pool just past the aerator into the shade.

It wasn’t long before a had my first F1 on the hard pellets and the first hour saw my catch some small F1’s and a few Skimmers for around 20lb so a good start but my catch rate starting to have more Skimmers than F1′ so after an hour I came short into my top kit line around my keep nets. I caught a couple more F1’s here but it was a bit of a wait for bites so I was soon back fishing towards the aerator. I decided to feed more pellets this time, throwing by hand to create noise and to spread out the feed. I still caught F1’s around the 3lb mark and the odd silver fish but I had to fish a little nearer to the aerator to get the F1’s. This was a little risky and I did have a couple of hooked fish drag me around the back of the aerator but luckily I was able to get them out into clear water.

So now at the half way point in the match I had about 40lb in my keep nets and looking around the pool most anglers where just catching the odd fish. I felt a framing place was now up for grabs. I could see an angler two pegs down was catching well shallow, so I decided to add a section on and fish casters shallow out in front of the aerator into the shade. I used a jigger set at 2 foot deep to 6 inches shallow and began feeding casters over the top. I caught F1’s straight away here and this is where I planned to stay for the rest of the match. I still fed the top kit lines and the margin but these where now only back up lines. I seemed to be able to build a good weight of F1’s shallow now and I hoped to stay shallow for the rest of the match. The fish kept coming and I had an enjoyable couple hours catching F1’s averaging 3lb each. I just hoped no one got a few big Carp feeding in their margins and my F1’s would be enough to frame.

Come the all-out the top weight to beat was that angler who was catching shallow two pegs down where he’d weighed in 90 odd pound of F1’s and Skimmers. I felt I had more and my fish went 106lb which was enough to win the match.

Best Rig of the day

This was a 4-6mm Preston jigger rig set 2 foot deep to 6 inches shallow. Set up on 0.17mm mainline with a small bulk of stotz’s above a 4inch Preston size 16 (0.13mm) GPM banded Ready rig. set up on a short kit with 11 green Preston Dura Slip elastic.