I’ve recently been fishing the open matches on the new match lake at Westwood lakes, Boston. It’s a canal style lake 13 mtrs wide and full of stocky carp, from 6oz to 11/2lb.

The main approach here is to fish on the far shelf in 18 inches to 2 foot of water, catching these small carp is all about been efficient and trying to come back with a fish every time.

The trouble is when you get lots of these fish in your peg you get lots of liners and foul hookers. I have found feeding 4mm Fin perfect feed pellets by catty more effective than the usual Kinder cupping which was resulting in too many foul hooked fish because of the higher concentration of bait in a small area.

In these situations you can’t beat the new soft hooker pellets they stay on well meaning more time in the water and not having to ship back and re-bait. Recently though I have been putting some in water as you would expanders and I have been very impressed. I was 3rd in the Sunday match with 61LB using them.

After the match I left the soft hookers in a bait tub of water just to see how long they would retain their shape and consistency. Having the week off work I booked in to the Tuesday open match when I got to my peg to set up I took out my bait and found the soft hookers I’d put in soak on the Sunday!

To my surprise they had retained their shape and were still releasing fish attracting oils. I went on to win the match with 77 LB 12oz using them so try soaking your soft hookers they are brilliant in the hot weather especially when the expanders are turning to mush!