February and March have been dedicated to practicing at Monk Lake for the Angling Times Southern Semi Final. With teams such as Dorking and Preston Innovations Thatchers last years winners, Preston Innovations DELCAC had to put some serious work in. On this particular venue we had 4 lakes that anyone could be drawn on the day.

Puma Lake has a good head of chub and bream with the occasional carp. If we were drawn in a chub area it was a case of an all out maggot attack but for the area where bream were the target it was decided a ground bait approach for the pole line would be chosen. The mix used for myself would be the ever faithful S-Pellet which I would introduce at 14.5 mtrs laced with Fin Perfect 2mm Micro Pellets.

The advice I would give when using the S-Pellet mix is to make sure you mix this as wet as possible and then add more water once you have let it stand for 20 minutes this will ensure when you cup it out it will sink. I add 2mm Fin Perfect Micro Pellets to the mix but before I do so I will put them in a bait box and fill this to about 3/4 full,add water to the top of the bait box and let it stand until all the water has been absorbed.

You can do exactly the same thing with 4mm Fin Perfect feed pellets as I will explain later. For the feeder line on Puma I use S-Pellet and fine brown crumb at a ratio of 50/50 ( Simple but deadly ).

Lake 4
This lake is either a method attack or long pole. The method mix I used was a 50/50 mix of the Fin Perfect Mix 1 Marine Fishmeal and Mix 2 Betaine Fishmeal. When mixed together this mix will become very light which helps it break down quicker. Obviously in winter the smallest method feeder should be used as you can not take out what you have put in and to overfeed a peg is the kiss of death.

Try the new Preston Innovation Method Feeders with the small mould as this seems to be the perfect balance in winter. The pole line would be a golf ball size of Supercrush F1 ground bait as this is a sweet fishmeal mix which is excellent for attracting small carp
and F1's into your peg.

Lakes 2/3
This for me is an all out pellet attack on the pole line using as I mentioned earlier the Fin Perfect 4mm Feed pellets soaked. In winter it is important to feed what you have on the hook and to feed to bites.

The feeder line for these two lakes would be either a small method or a small cage feeder with exactly the same method mix i mentioned for lake 4.
On the day our team draw was not great but the team captain Paul Hamlyn told us what he would expect from each peg. For some the day was hard where one fish was needed which was the case for me on lake 3 peg 109.

Derek Gladwin had the performance of the day with a section win off of a peg he was expected to get 6 points from. The team did what they were asked and won and through to become overall champions on the day which goes to prove the more effort you put in the greater the reward.