Approach to fishing large waterbodies - feeder match fishing

[Arries87]

Here is a question for the competitive anglers on the forum:

Most of the comps I fish here are at Vaaldam; it is a big, relatively shallow waterbody. It has abundant silvers in the shallows (3 to 6 feet depth at about 20m), in a 5 hour session it is realtively easy to get in excess of 60 fish, but sometimes (often) the bag weight is less than 15lb, with the odd bonus carp or muddy pushing up the weight, if you dont get the bonus carp/muddies, your bag weight drops to 10lb. Most winning bags average out between 22lb. However, when one fishes in 12 to 15ft of water (normally about 60m plus) there are 5lb to 6lb fish, however the quantity is much lower.

How would you approach a venue like this?

 

[kenpm]

How would you normally fish and feed the 20 metre line ? and what type of feeder/lead fishing would you use at 60 metres ? because this is part of the answer and how long is your match ?

 

[Arries87]

5 hour FIPSED rule feeder match, basically the only competitive scene we have here. A 36g enclosed (not wire mesh) distance feeder on the deeper line and an normal, 10g pipe feeder on the short line. Feeding the lines would be similar: some dead maggots, minced sweetcorn and chopped worm along with the groundbait (on the deeper line I would add some whole sweetcorn pips also). With groundbait, I am playing around a bit to get it more "attractive", the generic groundbait we have here is very bland with little to no additives besides the milled corn base.

 

[kenpm]

Crushed hempseed in dry form is the best thing you could add to your local generic groundbait to liven it up,Fishmeal might be available but sugar and salt are often used in groundbaits here which are mostly bread based.
The closer line we would often feed with a catapult or by hand with balls of groundbait but you may be restricted to feeder only so look at feeding the close line with 10 casts of the biggest feeder you dare to use or are allowed to use maybe to put a bed of feed down to start with having noted the distance by clipping up and using a marker if you can so you can find the area again which should not be a problem at 20/25 metres.
Pick up the longer range rod and do the same with the big feeder and make sure whatever feeder you intend to fish with will hit the same clip by having a trial cast with the set up you intend to fish with.
Now you have two baited areas with no more than 20 minutes of your 5 hours gone so pick a line and start to fish,if you get bites straight away stick with it but if the bites are slow or none at all after 20 minutes leave that line and try the other,ideally you are looking for a bite straight away but favour the line that is most active.
The hardest part is targeting the bigger fish so a hookbait like Chick peas might work as well as sweetcorn but double worm could be better.
Looking at the competitions on Youtube it looks like you sit out in the water on platforms and fish with similar feeder tackle to us fishing our larger natural fisheries.