GIVE IT A GO

Six tips to feeding for silverfish

FEED HEAVILY TO START

AT THE start I’ll throw in 14 large balls of the groundbait and leam mix. This sounds a lot, but I won’t be feeding any more of this mix, so I need a good amount to try and keep the fish in the peg.

KEEP LOOSEFEEDING

LOOSEFEEDING hemp is important. It not only gives me the chance to catch on it late in the day, but it also keeps on drawing fish into the swim by having something falling through the water all the time.

DOT YOUR FLOAT DOWN

THE less float bristle you have on show, the more bites you will hit. Trying to shot a float with small split shot is tricky, so I use micro styls. I’ll shot the float as normal, then add four or five tiny styls to leave just a speck showing.

TOP-UP WITH MORE

WHEN I think the effect of the cloud from balling in has finished, it’s time to add more feed with a pot. This is a mix of damp leam and grey leam (half a bag of damp to just 25ml of grey), plus particles.

SET UP MULTIPLE RIGS

BECAUSE of the cloud, I can catch fish 6ins off bottom and then switch to the deck later. One rig won’t do both jobs, so I set a couple up. Both are Sensas Avon floats with a 0.8g for fishing off deck and then a 1.25g pattern for down below

TRY ‘SHORT’ ELASTICS

IN DEEP pegs of over 10ft, you need a strong elastic to set the hook. Running elastic through a top kit would require around a No6, which is too heavy. My solution is to use a length of No4 elastic through just the tip section of the kit.