After a week of record June temperatures in the 30’s, some cooler weather was forecasted for this one. I drew peg 95 on the 4th canal, an end peg with the wind blowing into it. So I fancied it for a few.

The plan was to start short on a top kit+1 with hard pellets on the bottom before fishing shallow once I had primed my shallow lines. I planned to fish Casters to to left of the aerator later and I began feeding Casters here while on the short top kit line. This was good straight from the start and I caught around 20lb in the first hour before it began to fade. So time to come shallow.

I fished a jigger over to the left of the aerator but the cross wind blowing left to right meant this was difficult. I didn’t want to fish to the right of the aerator because of a couple of metal pipes sticking out of the water and fishing to the left of the aerator meant I could steer hooked fish away from it easier. But that cross wind made things difficult and I was risking my pole banging against the aerator and a possible pole section break. So I had to think going elsewhere. I wanted to still fish Casters. I’d brought a couple of pints and these are expensive, so I wanted to use them. So I began feeding my left margin with them while returning back to the top kit line for a few more fish.

It wasn’t long before I saw a few swirls in the margin and I went there next. I caught a F1’s straight away on the jigger with banded caster and these were a better stamp of fish, around 3lb. It was solid with fish and I stayed on this line for the rest of the match catching well. Those two pints of casters were soon used up and with an hour to go in the match I ran out of them. I had to change to feeding 4mm pellets with one in the band and luckily the fish still fed on the pellets. I was bagging now. I had a couple of break off’s/trashed rigs and I finished the match off with a normal shallow dibber rig but the fish didn’t seem to mind the difference in rigs I used.

I was first to weigh in and I placed 113lb 14oz on the scales. I hopped to pick up the pool/section win as canal 4 isn’t really going to compete with canal 3 and there were several tonne plus weights from canal 3 but my 113lb 14oz was enough pick up the pool/section win so happy days!

Best Rig of the day

This was the jigger rig which was a Preston 4-6mm Jigger float. I set the float at 6 inches shallow to 2 foot deep. It was set up on 0.17mm mainline with a bulk of stotz’s above a size 16 (0.13mm) 4 inch banded GPM ready rig. Set up on 11 Dura Slip through a short F1 top kit.