My team, Preston Innovations Delcac, have been busy practicing for our upcoming Angling Times Team Championships semi-final at Monk Lakes in Kent.

While we have not been breaking any pots in practise on the individual front, it has meant we have been able to work hard on those harder areas, learning tricks to try to winkle out a few extra fish and this may prove decisive on the big day.

F1s are the main species and in winter they can be notorious for shoaling tightly. Good pegs look after themselves but a finesse approach with pellets is the key to catching them on the pole line.

I like to use the Sonubaits Fin Perfect 4mm Expanders on the hook and what I really like about them is that you can pump them and they stay firm enough in the middle so that when you lift and drop at finicky F1 bites, they stay on the hook well. And the key to putting bigger weights of F1s together, or any fish for that matter, is keeping the float in the water, increasing your fishing time.

Feeding for F1s is a lot like you’d approach roach, in that it’s just a case of putting in five or six pellets - I like to feed the 4mm expanders - and then, once you start to string a few bites and fish together, you can take the pot off the tip and start to use the catapult.

If it turns really cold I like to scale the feed down to micro pellets and find the 2mm Sonubaits fin perfect feed pellets spot on. These are excellent because when you wet them they fluff up a little size wise, but don’t go mushy.

My typical standard rig for F1s on the pole involves the use of the new Prestons Slip System Natural Latex Elastic, which I fit through the top two sections of my Genis 10 pole.

I like the Preston Chiantis in a 4 x 12 and I use 0.11mm Preston Powerline as the main line and Preston Precision 0.10mm for hooklengths. Hook choice is a personal thing but I prefer PR30 size 22s to 18s or PR32s, a great pellet hook, in sizes 16 to 20, depending on the size of expander being used.

Shotting is very simple - just a bulk of Preston Slip shot in size 10s, about 18 inches from the hook, with a couple of 10s as droppers.

I’ll keep you posted on how we get on in our semi on March 2.
For now - best of luck.