I’ve just become the first match angler in the history of our wonderful sport to win the £25,000 winner-takes-all Parkdean Masters – and Sonu Baits’ Match Method Mix and F1 groundbait helped set me on my way.

I drew peg 5 on Jenny’s lake, which put me on a point of an island. I decided to fish slightly to my left in open water. I decided to kick off on the Method feeder so I set up an 11ft Preston Innovations Mini Carp feeder rod, teamed with 8lb Pro Max reel line on my Preston Inception reel.

As I said, the Method ix was 70-30 Sonu Match Method Mix with Sonu F1 groundbait and I kicked off fishing two dead red maggots inside the feeder on a hooklength of 0.15mm Preston Powerline to a size 16 Preston PR36 hook.

I started to catch F1s and all was going well until fellow Sonu angler Lee Edwards, pegged next to me, went shallow after 40 minutes on the long pole and caught a couple of carp.

I had to follow his lead and I had already been feeding pots of chopped orm and corn on my long pole line, also flicking a few 6mm feed pellets just past the pole to try to stop any carp in front of me from disappearing into adjacent pegs.

The ploy paid off because I went on to catch five carp a foot deep on a two-inch-long piece of dendrabena worm as hook bait, with a couple of these fish nudging 10lb apiece. I used a Preston Innovations Tyson dibber and a Preston 11H Hollo elastic on a Preston Pulla Kit when fishing shallow and it worked like a charm.

I chopped the worms up really fine so they form a liquid slop and I potted them in from a height of about four feet above the surface.
The plop this goo made was irresistible to the carp but they vanished from the shallow water so I went on to the bottom and there, fishing a full dendrabena on a size 16 PR456 hook under a PB Carp 5 pole float, I snared another five carp plus some tench, F1s and crucians to run out the winner with a shade over 86lb.

The victory was a nice way to round off my year and now I can use some of the money to pay a chunk off my mortgage and treat the wife and kids to a trip to Disneyland in Florida!