Have you ever plumbed up and thought your peg was too shallow to catch from?
Let’s face it, 12ins of water doesn’t seem enough to hold fish consistently or target them effectively. Instead, you might be drawn to deeper water.
Do this, however, and you’re missing out on one of the best parts of your snake lake peg – the water tight to the far bank commonly known as the ‘mudline’. There may only be 12ins of depth but, fed correctly, this is enough to catch from all day and, done right, foul-hooked fish and liners can be eliminated. The principles for fishing here aren’t too different to those we use for the nearside margins. Both swims are shallow and have a bank to fish against, but the mudline is further away so you can catch from the off because the fish will be a lot more confident there.
Here's how I fish them...
Find the right depth
Although you may have a mud bank, on some lakes this can be too deep and lead to problems with foul hooking. I’d look for 12ins-14ins of water tight against the bank.
Give yourself options
What I feed changes during the day. To begin with it’s dampened micros, then 50/50 pellets and groundbait (Advantage Baits Method Mix) and finally just groundbait.
Sink the feed
Rather than tap the bait in from a pot, I put holes in my pot and then submerge it, creating a vacuum that sucks the bait out stealthily! This stops fish coming off bottom.
Go for a big float
Keeping the rig stable all begins with the float, a 4x16 Carpa Edge. This is short, but very buoyant, and won’t be wafted about all over the place by feeding fish.
Create a target bait
Shallow water will soon get muddied up by feeding fish, so the bait needs to be easy to find. Two or three maggots, a 4mm expander pellet or half a worm are my favourites.
Keep the noise down!
You need to guide fish out of the peg quietly, which requires a soft elastic. There’s nothing to beat Daiwa Hydrolastic in the White or Grey grades for this job.
