This match had 18 anglers fishing a Harry’s Hero’s match on the Windmill and Middle pools at Manor Farm Leisure. I really wanted to draw on Middle pool but home for the day was peg 16 on the Windmill pool.

On arrival at my peg the water level was really low, a good 2-3 foot down from normal levels so I had to get in the water for this one. Surprisingly it was still a good depth of water at a top kit +2 about 5 foot deep after the marginal shelf where I had struggled to get my keep nets in water. So I set up this short line down the shelf, a margin line to my left 5 foot from the bank in 12 inches of water. Shallow lines and a Method for throwing over to the island.

I started on the jigga shallow at 13 metres with pellets and I had a great start catching around 20lb in the first hour. My thoughts were I was going to have a great day shallow but this came to a complete stop after the first hour. The water was fizzing now so I guessed the fish had moved to the bottom and not having set up a deep rig I throw out the bomb and pellet. I had one pull round but it came off but this was encouraging and I carried on with the bomb and pellet but I had no more bites so I quickly changed over to a small 20g Method feeder (the beauty of using the Preston ICS system) I threw out to the the island and five minutes later the rod pulled around ferociously ending in my mainline snapping off. So that was the end of that, It was new line as well but I lost the lot! So with just my pole lines now the only option a tried my short pole line on the bottom with 4mm hard pellets and I began to get bites. So I continued here for the rest of the day catching F1’s. It was difficult to land the fish because I had to steer them to the bank in between my keep nets as the water was so shallow but I only lost a couple of fish. I did keep trying shallow at times, only catching one more and the margin line I’d fed with dead red’s only produced micro Perch and was soon binned off. The short pole line was best and were I caught most of my fish.

At the end of the match my fish weighed in at a dead 71lb which was enough to win the section and pool. However there were two bigger weights off Middle pool, 101lb and 77lb, but I was more than happy to win Windmill pool as I don’t fish Manor that often. I thought I was going to catch a really big weight today shallow but for some reason it switched right off after that first hour but my short pole line did the business this time.

Best Rig of the day

This was the short pole rig in 5 foot of water which was a Preston 4×14 F1 Maggot pole float set up on 0.17mm mainline with a reversed tapered strung out shotting above a size 16 (0.13mm) 4inch GPM banded Ready rig used with a short kit with 11 dura slip elastic. Feeding 4mm hard pellet with the same in the band.