Farmer Jack

 Giles Cochrane's tactics below........

A pool of character solid with fish! Regular big weights. Offering lily pads out to the middle of the pool as a feature. Combined with the Bridge Pool offering sixty pegs. Pole or waggler venue. Stocked with our usual mix but be prepared to hook into a big carp well into double figures!

 Giles' Tactics

By Giles Cochrane

 The Farmer Jack

On the ‘Jack’ itself there a lot of margin pegs which can all throw up good weights. Some pegs have lilies at 12 metres and these are good holding areas for chub and carp. Chopped worm and caster to the lilies is a good approach but don’t strike away from the lilies at bites. This will cause the fish to dive into the pads. You need to strike into the pads to ensure the fish swim the other way. After a few hours of feeding worm the peg will start to fizz and this is the time to fish the pole shallow with caster over where you have been feeding. Carp bream and chub will come up in the water so it is a case of presenting a bait where they want it rather than trying to force them down to the bottom to feed.

Most of the pegs have the potential to produce carp weights from the margins but loose feed caster and fish at half depth to avoid foul hooking carp. Chub and barble are also worth fishing for down the edge as you can build a good weight of them before the carp turn up. The other lake; Bridge pool is more difficult to sort out and it is worth casting a lead with hair rigged meat to the island on most of the pegs here. The same tactics as the match lake work on this pool and a good weigh would be in the region of 50lb from this pool. The margins produce a lot of fish later in the match and any area where the wind has been blowing is usually a good area to be.  A few pints of caster and a quarter of a kilo of worm would be enough for all these pegs on this lake. The bridge peg itself is a good one to draw but you need a 14.5 metre pole to get across there. Fish can be hard to get out but don’t ignore the margins again on this peg.

Corn and meat are good baits but worm and caster would be more productive as they tend to attract the smaller fish like roach, chub and bream into the peg.