Alan Scotthorne looks back at a recent three-day event at Tunnel Barn Farm where crucial changes made all the difference.

I have just had a great run at festival fishing so when I rolled up at Tunnel Barn Farm for the Daiwa Pole Fishing Masters I couldn’t wait to get started. This was a three-day festival and my first-day draw was on Club Pool peg 11. After watching the match on Sunday and having a quick practice on Sunday afternoon I was sure luncheon meat was going to be the number one bait. This lake holds a good head of carp which also swayed me even further to think this. As it turned out the carp just did not feed, making F1s the only fish to target.

I did loose feed casters down the middle and caught a few fish shallow on this line. The fish were actually blowing in this area of the peg and although I tried a bottom rig it was with little conviction. Across was hopeless with meat and I only caught to the far-bank island late on with maggots. Very late in the match I also caught four fish on my caster line fishing quite deep at two and a half feet. At the time I didn’t know how relevant this would be for my next day’s result.

When the scales arrived I had just 46lb for third in the section with 96lb winning and 80lb second. I felt I was at the wrong end of the section with the two weights on the early numbers, but it’s so easy to blame a bad draw when really this could not be further from the truth. The next day I managed to draw back on the same lake, this time on peg 16. Although I was not overjoyed at least I had an opportunity to try to make amends.

Armed with the knowledge that the F1s were sitting deeper on my caster line down the middle on this 13m wide canal-type lake I committed myself to feed this line all match. The day before there were some fish on the bottom as this area was fizzing away nicely under the loose fed casters, so I again set up a bottom rig to fish worms this time. I decided to feed here with a medium tip pot of chopped worms to try to target these fish under the caster loose feed. I also hoped a two-inch piece of worm on the hook would be found easier on the soft mud bottom.

After spending some time with a small homemade weed cutter on my cupping top I cut out a nice gap in the reeds across so I could fish in 18 inches of water, tight to the bank. This was with the intention to fish just neat chopped worms across and totally different to my previous day’s match plan.

The first two hours were very slow and I had just four F1s in the net but everyone else I could see was also struggling. Then we had 15 minutes of heavy rain… and I mean heavy rain! After this deluge it gradually started to improve the fishing. I was now catching odd fish on my ‘deep shallow’ rig and also odd big F1s on the bottom on worm. I had one dodgy period when the lake came up two inches, but a re-plumb and resetting the depth got me hooking bites again. By big potting chopped worms across I could also nick odd fish and I had a brilliant last two hours.

When the scales arrived I was surprised to put 127lb on the scales for an easy section win but also second overall on the day to win a few quid.

I had set up three shallow rigs and could only catch on the deepest one set two and a half feet deep, with no fish on what I class the usual ‘F1 depth’ of around 12 inches. I am sure if I had taken this approach the day before I would have done a lot better. As I said it’s easy to say I drew badly when in reality I felt I got it very wrong.

The next day I fished a very similar match on High Pool for second in a really difficult section to finish just outside the top 12 with a six-point total. This is a great event with a very strong field. Congratulations to Andy Bennett for another great performance to win it for the second year running. Well done mate!

Alan Scotthorne’s Tunnel Barn Farm Rigs: