A nice start

Haines Angling Festival – Day one – 24/03/18

TUNNEL BARN FARM – HIGH POOL PEG 42 – 46LB 9OZ

Having not fished for a couple of weeks due to the mini beast from the east I couldn’t wait to get back out on the bank. I had been booked into this festival for a few months having finished fourth last year at Woodlands View. This year the festival had moved to Tunnel Barn, a fishery that I have heard about a lot but never fished, so ahead of the festival I contacted a few people to get some info on tactics and baits. Thankfully the advice I received was top notch.

I travelled up the day before as it was a three hour journey, so I decided to make a day of it going to Lanes to pick up my bait for the weekend and then had a sneaky practice to make sure my rigs were right. It was a good confidence booster as I caught 60-70lbs in three hours.

After a nice night’s sleep, arriving at the draw it was great to meet up with the guys and when breakfast was finished Steve Martin read out the rules for the festival, stating that we were on High Pool the first day, Canal/Club day two and New Pool on the final day and then started the draw. I went into the bag early and out came 42, I was told that it was an ok area.

APPROACH

Arriving at my peg I was on a corner with end of an island. The plan was to start short in the deep water on pellets, then fish in three foot across towards the island, have a margin line in the same depth of water and also loosefeed maggots over the deep line for the last two hours.

RIGS

2+3 LINE – Pellet

Elastic – NG 4-8 orange

Float – RW Flexi Dink 4 x 14

Mainline – 0.152 Colmic F1 Spider

Hooklength – 0.11 Colmic Stream

Hook – 18 Guru F1 Pellet

2+3 LINE – Maggot

Elastic – NG 4-8 orange

Float – Hillbilly Oliver 0.5g

Mainline – 0.152 Colmic F1 Spider

Hooklength – 0.11 Colmic Stream

Hook – 20 Guru F1 Maggot

MARGIN LINE / 14.5m line

Elastic – NG 4-8 orange

Float – RW Flexi Dink 4 x 12

Mainline – 0.152 Colmic F1 Spider

Hooklength – 0.11 Colmic Stream

Hook – 18 Guru F1 Pellet

 

MATCH

On the whistle I started short and while others around me fed multiple lines I fed just the line I was planning to fish with 15 micros. It was a slow start for everyone around me, in the first hour I had 8 F1s and had restarted the short line a couple of times but it had slowed completely. So I moved out to the far line and got an instant response catching lots of small F1s on pellets, this line lasted for a couple of hours before dying too.

I tried the maggot line, this resulted in half a dozen bigger F1s but it was very slow. In the last hour I rotated between this line and the margin to add half a dozen more F1s before the all out. I finished with 40 F1s clicked although I wasn’t sure what weight I had as a lot of them were on the small side. When the scales arrived the top weight in the section was 37lb and I was happy to weigh 46lb 9oz which was enough to win the section and finish second on the day, so a great start to the festival.