I would use a hard pellet on a hair and if fishing on the drop keep laying or slapping rig in to get bites you can hit or if allowed fish without a float and wait for elastic to pull out, still keep lifting and dropping/laying rig in and tap if allowed. Also keep coming shallower if missing bites.

cant you get them in deeper water off the island shallow?

Fish paste tight across, you will single out the better fish and probably get proper bites.

Why cant you fish paste on the slope ?

Its sounds perfect to me.

Just mark the butt end of your pole and tip the paste out on the same spot every time.

Try plumbing very carfully to find a flat spot or the shallowest area you can. 2 foot is deep and however you feed you will get fish off the deck. If you dump feed you will simply get fish feeding at all levels and will foul hook too many as you will get too many fish in the peg. If you think about it the fish are there anyway so why feed heavily?
I would feed by small cup and ping a few over by catty fishing dead depth preferably on a flat spot if you can find one or in the shallowest area if not.
I would also have a rig set half depth. All rigs would be on a short line with the pole tip straight over the top of the float with shot between the float and pole to keep the short line as straight and as tight as you can. Lift into every indication.

To solve your missed bites problem you have got to hair rig a hard pellet, its far more efficient. PR36’s are perfect and they come in small sizes as well. There is a peg on my local that sounds similar, its shallow and the fish will feed there but they will back off if your even the slightest bit clumsy. You have to feed just half a dozen pellets each put in through a kinder, then lift and drop , drag and leave the hookbait motionless. You are only fishing for one fish at a time and you have to do all this very delicately and very carefully. Keep everything very tight and the fish will hook themselves and if you can, try a lighter elastic to allow the fish to swim away without any commotion.

@tight over wrote:

ok will try paste next time but to give u an idea of the slope i reckon the lateral distance between 2 foot deep and 4 foot deep is between 3-5 feet depending on the peg! ie 1 in 2 or 1 in 3
There is no shelf or flat spot! just a constant slope from inches on the far bank to the crease at 6-7 foot deep and symetrical on near side.
iv always assumed paste will just hit slope and keep bouncing on down!

cheers

Not with really soft paste. Not that I’d use the horrible stuff!

Soft paste is the answer, I fish a venue which is similar in terms of depth across, I fish at 2ft and catch plenty.

Nathan, get on the paste, its almost as good as shallow fishing….

Here’s an idea, method on the pole!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sometimes a harder paste can be the way to go because you can drag the rig up against the slope until its sat right. But a soft paste should just settle on the deck no problems. Don’t feed with a catty though or you’ll have foul hooking problems. Just feed some pellets or hemp through the paste pot.
The size of fish your stating and the winning weights it doesn’t sound like a heavily stocked venue so you’ll have problems creating enough competition between fish to get them feeding properly shallow. try and pin the fish down to the deck.

It may help also if you tell us the venue, someone on here may well know the venue and be able to give you far more detailed advice on how to fish the venue.

Good luck.

Fish short of the island by 1-2metres, try to make most of your feed hit the float so the odd one pings past.Ideally you need to be fishing in deeper than 2ft, I would hope for 3-4ft to catch shallow.Also try fishing 0.12 to an 18 with a soft elastic.

Big bread punch fished shallow and tight to islands or across on commercial canals usually solves your problem! Thats how they are sorting out Heronbrook and also Willow at Brookside at the moment.

I would be very surprised if none of the bites were caused by silver fish.

me too gary
one way to find out is stick a maggot on a size 18s