2025 - June 8th - Hjalmere Canal DM match as a guest

I had an invite to join the DM2 with the intention of fishing practice as well as viewing the peg situation in readiness for the next weekends 2 day competition at the same venue.

Thanks guys !

Canal looking rather beautiful

So this car park area is much improved - Kjell informs me the authorities in charge want to make the canal path much better ...... for cyclists !! .....yeah right , we will see where that goes .

We were all greeted by that horrible minute biting insect, the 'Knott' (Midge)

Jesper had the right idea.

Today the day after the match i can see a few bites appearing on my head and arms - horrible things !

 Next time Phil do not leave your gear on the ground as the Ants had a fun time !

Peg 1 for me and according to the guys a noted Tench peg .......no pressure then !

The Platform is so useful these days , MATRIX of course

The match started with me balling in Black groundbait mix with dead pinkies on my 11.5 m line . I then threw a few light ground bait balls on far side and also through a feeder. Setting up two TAP rigs with Garbolino SPT19 3gr ( Canal was towing well) to a 16's 3405 SENSAS hook. Another rig was a 4gr EXNER ILIASZ and 12s hook Haybusa 157 (hopefully for some Tench !?)

Also set up two waggler rods , a method rod (wishful thinking?) , a feeder rod - All MATRIX / PRESTON gear - of course !

Very poor start was incurred as i had no bites in the first 30 minutes !! . I could see the rest of the section taking small fish on far side waggler . I changed to feeder for 15 minutes with three casts and one see-though roach . I then changed to TAP as the hour mark approached and took two roach in successive casts then nothing. I noticed more of the section anglers were still catching steady on waggler so i decided to try that again and fished off the far boat shelf in deeper water and i got rewarded with a few bottle top skimmers . Then it went dead and by the start of the last hour i had really nothing in the net but i had continued firing small gb soft balls on that waggler line using my maggot catapult. This must have brought a response as i picked up 2 kilos in the last hour with skimmer (some better ones) and roach and finished on 32 fish total for 2480 . I knew it had fished poor as Håkan DNW and he normally gets a good weight and Patrik was not catching that well and he is a venue expert and has had many good catches on waggler like last year (i think 8 kilos in same peg as today) 

It looks like the early B section fished better and that man Thomas Larsson picked up another crown !

'Scores on the doors my luvs'