26th June - Private Pond, Hurst Green, Surrey

Off again Friday. This time I was back to the Private pond in Hurst Green to see if I could catch at least one of the 3 carp that got away last time.

I arrived at the venue about 6:30 to be met by one car (someone else here) and a notice saying that due to a pre-booked match the pond was closed from 3:30! I was devastated because as you know the hours before dark are when the bigger fish come out to play!

Peg 1 was free again so that part of my plan was successful. Here is my swim.



According to the forecast the weather was going to produce another sorcher however having driven for 35 minutes in the rain and setting up in the wet I began to doubt it.

Learning from previous experience, I didn't even contemplate fishing the swim directly in front of me but directly went for the one by the lily pads. I fed the swim early as I set up with my usual starting line up (5lb main line, 16 hook). There was a slight difference in that I used Drennan wide gape hooks to nylon this time in the hope that should I indeed hook a good fish my chances of catching it were improved.

I was not happy with having to pack up at 3:30 and this initially affected my concentration. I knew there were plenty of fish around but I just couldn't get into any of them. The first hour yielded only a couple of small roach on single maggot. They were so small I switched immediately to scopex flavoured sweetcorn.

I started to get small carp of a few ounces nearly every cast but nothing more substantial. The pattern for the day was set. One ball of groundbait every hour, a few hempseeds every cast, a few pieces of sweetcorn into the margins to my right every fish caught and an alternation of hookbait between the scopex sweetcorn and bread everytime I caught a fish.

This worked perfectly as I had a bite a cast and almost a fish every other cast. They were mostly small carp but interspersed with these were some fine roach and a good head of crucians (see below).


The odd tench also made it in to the net, including 2 or 3 like this one.


The other angler packed up at 9:30. We bumped into each other as I was returning from a call of nature. I told him I wasn't happy with the situation and he showed me the list of matches booked. Today wasn't on it - so he said according to club rules I couldn't therefore be removed. I didn't particularly want a confrontation so I split the difference and took the chairman's number. I rang him about 10:30 and left a message explaining the situation and asking him to ring me back.

Around lunchtime another member turned up and after an hour or so I went to stretch my legs and had a word with him. Good news he told me the match would only be attended by 5 or so people, including the chairman. I was feeling confident about things now. I even got into one of two decent fish (nothing spectacular though).

Back to the fishing, they were flying in now. One of the guys at work was astounded when I told him that on a previous trip I'd caught close on 100 fish - so this time I counted each one. One piece of sweetcorn for a digit and a piece of meat for the 10's. By 2:30 I had around 60 in the hyperthetical net. I knew things would slow down when I targeted the better quality fish so I took nothing for granted.

I finally spoke to the chairman about 3 o'clock and he said it was fine, I could stay where I was. I took this as a positive sign and immediately switched tactics. I feed cubes of luncheon meat into the 2 swims and then loaded up the hook. First cast away goes the float and in comes yet another very small carp. How do they manage that?

I stayed on the meat until I packed up at 8pm but couldn't connect with anything larger than a few ounces. The sun reflecting off the water had finally taken it's toll. I was knackered. The match finished at the same time and I thanked the chairman, Dave Walker for the favour. All in all I caught 87 fish, 13 shy of my target. Not many of them topped a pound but I did catch a nice cross section. The bottom line was I enjoyed myself.

Here is a picture of my lone spectator. He stayed hanging aound my swim all day!



Tight lines.

June 21st Boulthurst Farm Pond, Hurst Green, Surrey

Unlike the other 2 club ponds this one opened for angling on the glorious sixteenth. One of my mates had his 30th do on the Friday so I was not fit to fish it until the following Sunday.

I arrived at the pond around 6:45 to find no one there - what a shock!

I wasn't disappointed as this of course as it gave me first choice of swims. The favourite onon the venue is the one where the stream enters the pond. It's the furthest walk from car park albeit some 50 yards!

This is a view of the pond looking from my peg.

Even though I was on an end peg I still had 3 lines to attack at various points during the day. The first was directly in front of me. This I used for most of the day. The second and third were to my immediate right and left but these I wouldn't touch until later on in the day as the water was very shallow (about a foot). I did however know that from prior experience the bigger fish would arrive in there sooner rather than later.

This is the swim 1.


The pond is predominantely all carp, some to about low doubles I believe. There are some silver fish present, roach,bream and crucians. There is supposed to be one tench but I've never caught it.

Tackle and bait wise it was the usual starting point. One large ball into swim 1 and then a few hemps seeds per cast. A single maggot on the hook.

Initial response was good - some nice roach in the 4 to 6 ounce range. After an hour I tried the scopex flavoured sweetcorn but nothing doing. I tried bread as well during the morning to see if I could coax a better stamp of fish out but to no avail.

Around 9am two other people turned up, the first promptly asked for my membership card and the second turned out to the chairman who had put me on to this swim in the first place. Anyway they stayed to about 2 in the afternoon, when they left for their dinner!

Finally I did manage to catch a small carp of a pound around lunchtime which cheered me up somewhat.

I did catch a crucian and a mate wanted to know what one looked like. Here it is.




By 3 in the afternoon I decided a change in tactics had to be made. In came the float rod to be replaced by my feeder rod. A change of line strength as well, 5lb mainline changed to 6lb (the free invisible red line from the Angling Times). No feeder required as I was going to freeline meat underneath the bushes and in the margins, something that had worked for me before.

I fed swim 2 with a few cubes of meat while I continued setting up. The swim is barely a foot deep so quiet and a certain degree of stealth was necessary. I flicked the meat out into stream cuurent about 2 metres inside the pond and laid the rod down with the tip a few inches above the water. Less than a minute later the tip shot round. I struck and the fish spat the hook. Such was the force that my line shot up into the nearest tree! One hook down. Here is swim 2.


That swim was now dead so same tactics but this time into the swim on my left. Depth roughly the same except that it was underneath a tree. This time it was a good 10 minutes before the tip went round. Off the fish shot to the far side of the pond where it spat the hook.

I altenated between the 2 swims for the rest of the day. I did manage to catch a couple of 3 pounders using this approach but to be honest I've had better days there. I did manage a total of 23 fish by the end of the day.

I shall be back later in the summer to better my performance that's for sure.

Tight Lines

June 13th Private Pond, Hurst Green, Surrey

A rare outing for me on a Saturday due in the main to having a too many beers the previous Thursday and suffering for it on Friday.

One of the advantages of going on the Saturday of this particular week was that the weather for June had been pretty bad leading up to the weekend. There was relatively cold weather plus rain storms. The forecast for the day was 22 degrees with a slim chance of rain.

I was up at 5am and on the road by 5:50. Not surprisingly there was no traffic and within 35 minutes (it's only 17 miles) I pulled up at the fishery. There was one car there already, my mate from my previous visit. He had set up on the far side so I went in the opposite direction to peg 1.

The pond is about 2 acres in size, maybe a little less. Here is the view from peg 1 which is in the corner.

There are considerably more sets of lily pads on the far side of the island.

I selected 3 lines to fish - the first directly in front of me, which to be honest started off very slow and never really recovered. While I was trying it I could see movement by the lily pads off to my right all the time.

This is line 1 which I abandoned after the first hour. I was fishing midway across.

As my last visit to the venue was a success (by my standards) I decided to initially adopt the same tactics.

For tackle, I set up my 12' float road with 5lb main line and a size 16 hook. I used a 3 no 4 crystal waggler float which I set up for maximum sensitivity which was to pay dividends later.

For goundbait I used the usual mix of brown crumb, sweetcorn, some red attractor and scopex flavoured water. For hookbait I had with me, maggots, bread, sweetcorn, scopex flavoured sweetcorn and meat. I also had a small bucket of hemp which I fed every cast.

My initial casts caught the usual small roach and rudd. After 30 minutes or so of small fish on maggot I switched to scopex flavoured corn. Only one or 2 small (very) carp came to the net.

As stated above, after the first hour I switched to line 2 (see below) which is nice little swim right in the corner of the pond. At the most it's only 2 foot deep however there were signs of life all day around it. Some larger carp were also showing in the pads feeding.

I started off on the scopex corn and was immediately successful with a string of small carp plus one or two tench and the occasional crucian carp. Eventually the corn stopped working so I thought I'd try some bread. Here's where having the float set low paid off as almost a crucian a cast was brought to the net! I'd never caught more than 1 at a time and here I was getting a netful!

I have to comment that some of the tench did look rather thin. This one a 2lb example (my best of the season so far) fell to breadflake.

When I made my initial enquiries about the pond I was told that there were 5 perch in there, well I caught one of them on a piece on scpex corn! It was about a half pound. Going back to the bread I managed to catch some quality roach, not monsters but ones you have to use the landing net for. I reckon I got about half a dozen of these specimens.

At around 3:30 in the afternoon the float shot away and this just under 4lb carp was in the net.

The rest of the afternoon pretty much followed the same pattern as the rest of the day with the exception that I began to feed small cubes of meat into line 3, the margins to my left (see photo below).

By 17:30 I decided to give the swim above a go. Less than a minute after casting in with a cube of meat as bait the float slid away, I hit it and all hell let loose. The rod bent over as the fish headed for the lily pads in the centre of the pond. Dam, it had made it. I kept applying pressure and a short while later it came out. I then had it going up and down in front me which gave me the confidence to reach for the landing net. As I contemplated this move the fish rolled and broke the hooklength! I was gutted.

I put the experience down to only having a size 16 hook on so I fed a large handful of meat into my original swim by the lilys plus 2 or 3 large handfuls of maggots and set up again this time with a size 14 hook. Cast out again, no more than a minute later the float shot away and after striking the fish dug itself into the nearby lily pads. This time the hooklength snapped as I begun to apply pressure. Even more gutted than before!

I sat on my box for a few minutes contemplating whether or not to call it a day. Finally I talked myself into giving it one more shot. The rest of the maggots and meat were dispatched into the same swim as before and I re-cast to the same spot. Not an instant take this one, I had to wait for about 5 minutes before the float went and I struck. Off it went, not into the nearby pads this time but the ones in the middle of the pond. Applied pressure and sure enough it came out. When it rolled on the surface I had a good look at it. The blood pressure rose but I kept my cool. The fish was now going across in front of me but unlike before I banished all thoughts of the landing net until it was good and ready. It finally decided to have one last bolt for freedom which as it arrived on the far side of the pond it got! It had spat the hook out! At that point I was ready to jump in after it!

I decided it was time to call it a day. On reflection it was a great days fishing. I must have caught close to 100 fish. Although the last hour was a bit of a failure I do know 2 things, the first is, there are good fish in there and secondly, that I can hook them. I'll be back for them that's for sure.

Tight Lines.

June 1st 2009 - Private Pond, Hurst Green,Surrey

Today was my going to be my first visit to this venue. It's run by Hollands Anglers Society in Surrey.

Still partially suffering from the sunburn from the previous Friday and with the weather forecast saying expect more of the same I actually had the good sense to put on some sunscreen!

Although I hadn't been to this venue before, I discovered via the power of the internet that it was only about a mile from the club's other pond at Boulthurst Farm.

The best thing about fishing a club lake as opposed to a commercial is that you are not tied to any particular opening time. Bearing this in mind I was up and out by 6:00. The drive was really easy as it was mainly against the flow of traffic and in 30 minutes or so I pulled up at the ponds. A minor irratation was that you had to park in the road next to the pond fence however the road was fairly quiet and I could see my car from my swim all day.

The club has 2 ponds at this site, one on either side of the road. The one on the left as I arrived is called Dunks and the one on the right is called Private(?). I'd spoken to the main man at the club (Dave Walker) a couple of days previous and he told me to fish the Private pond, pegs 1, 10 or 11.

There were already 2 people there before me - one was setting up and the other was just entering Dunks. We had a quick chat before I entered the fishery. Having never been there before I had to find how the pegs were numbered - It turned out peg 3 was at the gate so that made peg 1 off to my right.

It was obvious that the fishery was well looked after, as the swims had a nice stone path leading to a very spacious fishing platform and the vegatation had been cut back. The swim itself was at the corner of the pond. The far bank was about 20 yards away and as the land was not part of the fishery it was non fishable. There was a set of lily pads right in the corner about 15 yards to my right. The margins between pegs 1 and 2 were separated by another set of lily pads.

After plumbing the depth I discovered that there really wasn't any where I was. Two feet deep at the most!

Having been told that the pond contained a good head of carp, I decided to ensure I was on the right set up from the start. I used my Shimano 12' float rod, 5lb main line and size 16 hook with a 3.5lb hooklength.

Bait wise I came armed with almost everything I could think of. As it was going to be a long day I mixed more goundbait than usual but kept it simple, 90% brown crumb, some Van Der Eynde silver fish attractor and half a tin of sweetcorn mixed with scopex flavoured water.

I fed a large ball of groundbait plus a couple of handfuls of hemp directly in front of me (the swim below). Almost immediately there were signs of movement in front of me which I took to be roach or rudd.

The old nerves began to jangle as I wondered if I could catch in this new venue. Ten minutes later I had the answer as the float disappeared and I landed a very small carp - still they all count! At the end of the first hour after I'd switched to scopex flavoured sweetcorn a few more small carp were caught.

After the first hour I switched to the swim by the lily pads - See the photo below. I had a good bite almost straight away but it spat the hook.

The day settled into a pattern of small carp plus the occasional 2 or 3 pounder. In between the carp I did manage 3 tench the best of which was one about a pound.

As a new face I was attracting some attention from fellow members and before long one came round and asked to see my membership details. I didn't mind I keep everything on me.

Around 10:30 the float dived away and out came this nice common.

My swim I later found out was the only one that didn't get any shade at all, even as the sun went down! After Friday I could feel that familar tingling on my arms and face.

When I fish Stubpond I have to pack up around 4:45 which always appears to be a shame for me as I think the evening is the best time for fishing - the sun dips and the fish come close in and feed! I stayed until 8:30 when my eyes couldn't stay open any longer.

As is always the way as the sun went down the bigger fish appeared. Around 17:30 I caught my biggest fish of the day.

In conclusion I would say that as this was my first visit to the venue, it was GREAT! I caught all day long, it was nice and peaceful and the pegs are spaced a deal apart. I will be going back there soon.

Tight lines.