Back To The Old School!

Traditional bream tactics help Tommy Pickering to festival win!
Tommy Pickering has won the Maver Larford Lakes Silverfish Festival, with a six point score.  The Preston Innovations and Sonubaits backed ace managed an impressive three section wins out of four in the 38 strong event – pipping Andy Moors and Grant Albutt to the top spot.

He explained: “I was very lucky to have been bought up doing a lot of traditional feeder fishing – and had the best teacher of all, in Dennis White. A lot of the lessons that Dennis taught me at Worsborough Reservoir in the early 1970s have rung true this week at Larford – and I have also been quite lucky at the drawbag.

There were two areas of the match where you really didn’t want to draw –and its no coincidence that all of the top four managed to avoid these areas on all of the four days!

With hardly any fish showing on the pole, the match was an out and out feeder fishing contest – which suited my style perfectly. I fished a small groundbait feeder, with a 50cm hooklength, of 0.10mm Preston Precision line to a size 18 PR434 hook. Hookbait was invariably a single red maggot, and I fished a mix of Sonubaits F1 Black through the feeder – which importantly contained no loosefeed at all.

Another key point proved to be striking at any slight indication on the tip, as cold water bream have   habit of picking up a bait and sitting still with it in their mouths.

Perhaps the biggest lesson though – and something that only experience can teach you, is patience. Dennis always taught me to aim for just 15 casts in a five hour match – any more than that and you were on a shedful, as you were reeling in with fish on! His advice paid dividends –and often bites would come after the feeder had been in the water for 15 minutes or longer.”

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