Richardson Lake: Elastics & Rigs

We begin this series of articles on 'How to fish Marsh Farm' with a look at tackling Richardson Lake with a pole. We've enlisted none other than the 2016 World U23 Champion Alex Clements. Alex is a regular in the England Youth team and brings his vast

knowledge to Marsh Farm to help you catch more fish than before. Joining Alex will be Godalming's Dave Ewing, who not only is a chief writer for one of Frances' major angling publications, InfoPeche, but is also an accomplished angler at Marsh Farm himself.

Before Alex gets into his session, it's a good idea to run through the venues profile, on the right, so you have the basic knowledge. But Alex adds...
Keep it Simple! There's no need for particularly heavy or complicated tackle here. The bream average 2.5lb, tench 3.5lb and crucians up to 2lb.

Dave begins by asking Alex about his pole set up, in particular the elastics he'll be using and the rigs. Alex favours soft elastics even, when targeting fish in the margins. His open water choice was a 5-8 hollow and a 6-10 hollow for down the edge. Both are set up with pulla kits.

Alex uses 0.15mm Sensas Feeling Competition to a 0.12mm hooklength on his open water rig and to an 0.13mm hooklength for his margin.
Floats for both long and margin are 0.3g Sensas CCX, but he'll use up to 0.6gr if any tow is present. We have calm conditions for the session.

Alex shotted both floats with a string of No.9's, spaced 2cm apart and strung out from his hooklength loop. He used a couple of No.11 styls above the strung out bulk, as trimming shots. There are no dropper shot. Both rigs used either 16 or 18 size Guru LWG hooks. Alex believes that by stringing

out his No.9 shot, which are hard Ballebeni shot, directly above the 6" hooklength loop, it will give him a positive rig for most conditions. You'll see in further videos that Alex constantly lifts and works the rig, up and down in the swim, which gives him effective presentation.