I’ve just had a brilliant days fishing at Lake Ross. Winning the match with 85LB of F1’s, when you consider there was ice on part of the lake that’s good fishing by any standards.  I love fishing for F1’s this time of the year, you really have to think about feeding and rigs etc to get the most out of your peg. On the day I fished 2 lines at 14 metres (2o’clock and 10 o’clock), plumbing up , making sure they were the same depth and then picking a marker on the opposite bank to make sure  I was fishing bang on my feed. I also put some electrical tape around my 14 metre section to make sure I was holding it in the same place every time. Little things like this will get you more bites, over the match.

Rig wise I used a PB inter 1’s  .2 and .3 with a spread bulk of 11 stotz on 0.11 power line to a 0.10 hook length and an 18 PR 32 hook. The elastic was a Preston 8 latex, on a pull bung. Bait for the day was a couple of pints of dampened down 2mm Fin Perfect feed pellets and some 3mm and 4mm Fin Perfect expanders for hook bait which I’d pumped with F1 additive.  On the day I was picking up odd fish by alternating swims, feeding one with a nugget of 2mm feed pellets and fishing the other. When bites slowed on a 4mm expander, by changing to two 3mm on the hook I was maintaining my catch rate. I think the reason these worked so well is because they are the same size as the 2mm dampened down feed pellets. Therefore the F1’s are less wary of them. I think Sonu Baits are the only company that do such a small expander, and for F1’s in winter you need these as they will help to get you more bites.

Another little trick that usually gets me a few extra fish in the last hour is to start a new line at 16metres and feed a small nugget of 2mm feed pellets, leave it 10 minutes to settle giving the fish somewhere to re-group. In the last hour in this match I had 20Lb on this line when the anglers either side stayed fishing at 14metres and were struggling for bites. One thing I must stress though is don’t try this too soon or you will just push the fish further away or worst still to your neighbours peg.