Discover hidden features – Andy May

Fish O’Mania champ Andy May reveals why a plummet could be the best £1 you ever spend!

IT’S incredible just how much money anglers spend on tackle, but could an item costing less than £1 be the most important item in our tackleboxes? Thousands of pounds are splashed out on the best rods, poles and seatboxes but current Fish O’Mania champion Andy May puts a lot of his success down to the intricate use of a tiny piece of kit that would fit in the palm of your hand. “People pay a lot of attention to the cover that they can easily see such as islands and aerators but what a lot of them forget about is that there are dozens of features hidden beneath the surface,” explained Andy. “There’s only one way to find out what it looks like underwater and that is by carefully using a plummet to precisely gauge depths and contours of the lakebed.”

Common mistakes

Every angler owns a plummet and if they are using the pole they will almost certainly use it briefly at the beginning of the session. But Andy believes the time they spend using it is often cut short by the anticipation of actually starting to fish and that can have a detrimental effect on the final result. “Anglers will plumb up in one place for each line. So if they have a line at 13m they will ship straight in front of them, quickly plumb up and then leave it at that. “The chances are they are going to have to chase the fish around and fish to the left or right of the original target zone and when they move their rig, they assume they will have the same depth of water because they are still holding the pole at the same distance. “That may be correct is some cases but at