Whenever possible over the last four weeks I’ve been making the journey to Partridge Lakes to get in some much needed practice for the Angling Trust winter league final. Although it’s only 85 miles from my home to Warrington if you take the M62, it’s a real pain at the moment with 17 miles of road works to contend with and mid-week traffic you can only imagine!

This apart, I must admit I have been enjoying the challenge of a new venue and did manage a win with 152lb of mainly F1 ‘s on one of the Thursday matches when the fishing is extra good as you have a little more room on the narrow Covey lakes. To amass such a big weight, you often have to catch shallow down the middle on either casters loose fed or Maggots depending on your preference. I also had a 140lb weight for second but made a slight error with too many fish in one of my keepnets. The excess fish were deducted from my catch so was relegated to 5th with 122lb. My mistake so I suffered the consequences.

Catching big weights shallow is great fun but when the pegging is tight the venue changes, so you need to alter things slightly and give yourself more options to nick a few fish from different spots. In the most recent match last Sunday, I didn’t fish shallow at all as I wanted to get the other lines I selected right, so I have more in my armoury for the final this weekend.

At the end of the match I had caught sixty fish from just two lines, one across and one down the track. I did feed a close line but didn’t have a bite on it, possibly due to the fact we were peg for peg in the hundred plus peg match. At the weigh in my fish went 60lb, just 6lb short of the frame and 16 lbs short of second with 90lb winning the match.

Not wanting to give too much away, I caught very well across late in the match after discovering how to feed this line to keep the fish there and was bagging at the all out. It may have cost me on the day not feeding a shallow line but I feel much more confident for the match this weekend with more strings to my bow.

My section was won by Geoff Scott with 76lb off peg two on paste, also finishing second overall in the match, a great result for him on what I think is a difficult bait to use, but he excels at it. It’s not something I will use as I feel that the window of opportunity is so small for me to catch with this bait that it’s difficult to put the effort in with it with all my other commitments.

I can now see why so many anglers are drawn to Partridge Lakes for every match, it’s a great venue and because it is narrow you do not have to fish 16meter poles to reach the fish. It’s well maintained and the people who run it are really friendly. I recently did a short film there that is on Online Fishing TV so check this out in the next couple of weeks for some brilliant tips for fishing shallow for F1’s.