Wednesday, 27 August 2025

24/08/25 - Tunnel Barn - House

Weight - 75lb 9oz
Catch - 43 F1s, 5 Carp, 7 Roach, 5 Perch
Weather - Warm & sunny
Match - Tackle Den (16 fished) - 5th overall, 2nd in section

My first trip back to Tunnel since the over 50s festival in May and I was looking forward to it, as we were on House Pool which is my favourite. However, it would be nice to draw away from pegs 8 to 14 and see a different area of the lake, so I shouldn’t have been surprised when I drew p14. An open deep-water swim with no island within pole range.

I had wanted to fish caster shallow and ideally needed cover or a decent ripple on the water, as I have had 90lb shallow here in the past.

Although I found out that maggot was the current bait, and I did think about buying some from the on-site shop, I decided to stick with my plan of caster and paste.

On the all-in I started at 1+1 fishing paste (50:50 mix of So Simple Coco Squid & Crushed Expander) over fishery 4mm pellet. I stayed on this for 90mins alternating between 2 swims, catching mostly F1s.

I had primed a shallow caster line and when I switched the response was disappointing. After trying 3 different shallow rigs, I only had 1 F1 and 2 roach and soon binned the line.

Instead, I focused on my margins finding 18ins of water down the left and right toss potting caster, fishing double caster. I bounced between the 2 swims, with the left margin being the strongest, before trashing my rig. Once I sorted a new rig it took 10-15mins to get back in a rhythm, but the right-hand swim wasn’t quite the same.

I tried introducing a small amount of groundbait to kick start the right margin which just drove the fish scatty, so I didn’t do that again.

The left margin was still producing which I kept topped up with caster. As for the right margin I plumbed up a new shallower spot where I fed some micros and 4s, fishing paste over the top. I managed to catch a few better stamp F1s and carp, but generally the fish weren’t feeding confidently.

I must admit I didn’t feel I got it right today and maggot would have been a better option. In the end I was quite relieved to claim the section money by default thanks to John coming 2nd overall from p6. As I expected the better weights came from the back of the pool.

1.    114-  1 – Andy Black – p27
2.    110-  3 – John Brady – p6
3.      92-11 – Simon Collins – p25
4.      87-  0 – Ian MacDonald – p29
5.      75-  9 – Ken Rayner – p14

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