Match 5 'The Mudflats'

Needed a win on this match and previous experience on this venue told me the pole will out fish the feeder, I drew peg 15 just under the wires, it was 13m out to get into the actual river past the reeds, first of all I plumbed my feeder line and found at 25 turns I was just on the inside of the main flow and a 1.5oz glass tip was perfect and a 35g feeder held well, next to plumb up on the pole, I didn't see much point coming onto a 10 or 11m line due to the reeds so just settled on 13m, I put up a 1.5g Drennan Trio on 0.12mm Browning Hybrid main line with a size 18 Tubertini Series 2 hook attached to 0.10mm of the same hook length. Choice of elastic was a doubled 4 Preston original slip.

I always set my pole up at 13m with 1 top kit with what I plan to be my main rig up and plumb with this first, this will generally give you an idea on the water in front of you and you can set your other rigs up according to what you want them to do for that swim. i had about 1.5m of depth and there was a fair pull from the current which was good, i also chose to set up a 3g Cralusso Torpedo to hold bottom to present a stationary bait in the hope to pick up a bonus fish every now and then.
To be honest i didn't really think i would catch on the pole line as there was no real depth and the catches during the week were all on the feeder at 25-40 turns out.

On the whistle i cupped in 6 hard balls of Groundbait made up of VDE Black Secret, Supercup and 25% Black Leam to add some weight, in this i added some hemp a small handful of caster and some dead pinkies, looking up the bank on my section i noticed only 1 other had chose to feed a pole line.

After a few chucks with the feeder to get some food out i started getting the odd Roach, nothing of any size but i seemed to be the only one catching in the section, on every cast i pinged out 5 or 6 casters on the pole line in the hope that a few fish may move in, about 30 mins later and only a few fish in the net i decided to try the pole, i baited up with a single caster and 30 seconds later I'm in to a nice roach of about 150g, this continued through out the match with an average fish being around 100g, i continued to catch throughout the match only topping up my grounbait when the bites slowed down a bit.

I finished up winning the section and the overall match with 6.700kg, i tried the flat float on a few occasions but they seemed to want a moving bait on this day
I won't be fishing the next league match due to the 'All Ireland' in Killishandra


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