When it is as cold as it has been the last three weeks, with snow and ice, careful feeding cannot be stressed enough - and I like to doctor my catapult using a clever trick so that my Sonu Fin Perfect feed pellets hit the correct mark every time.

The trick is to thread some 7lb fishing line down through the middle of your catapult elasic and back around the cup so that you have a foot-long length of line protruding through each end of the catty elastics when the elastic is re-attached to the catapult frame.

The line through the elastic in essence prevents you from pulling the catapult cup back as far as it can go. By creating this situation where the pouch can only be pulled back a finite distance,it means you can only fire bait out a finite distance, too.

I use the Preston Pinpoint catapults and the blue plastic pouch on them is great for the line-through-the-elastic idea, because I can thread it through the small hole which is built into the back of the pouch.I use 7lb Korum reel line to thread through the catapult frames and by trial and error you can make sure that all your pellets or pieces of corn hit the same spot.

At 16 metres on the pole, or at 20 metres fishing the bomb, this feeding idea can make a massive difference.

You have to make sure that you put the stop caps back in the elastic and thse grip the line, so that it cannot slip when you pull the catty back.
Once you start doing it you’ll soon stop, using a conventional catapult altogether, because of the massive gains in accuracy when feeding.To get the range right, I'll often set the pole up with a cupping kit on it amnd swing it out to the distance I'm going to fish. Once the all-in sounds, I'll just catapult a grain or two of corn out until they start hitting the pole pot. To achieve this I may have to tighten the line or allow a little more through the pegs on the ends of the elastic, but it works.It's certainly an idea worth trying, especially when bites are thin on the ground and you don't want to overfeed the fish.