July 23rd Mill Lake Stubpond Fishery Fellbridge Surrey

After an absence of nearly 3 weeks I decided to pay a return visit to Stubpond.

Although the school holidays were upon us, it was midweek and there are no under
16's allowed in the fishery so I was confident of finding a decent swim on Mill Lake as usual.

To my horror there was another car parked in my usual spot nearest to the lake, had I lost my favourite swim? As luck would have it, no I hadn't, my fellow angler had obviously decided that the top of the lake was for him.

I made my way to the swim and my first impression after an absence of 3 weeks was that the weed growth had really taken control. However what I could see from the surface was nothing compared to what was beneath. The picture below gives some indication of the weed growth:

Some carp were already moving on the surface so I made sure that my set up was correct. I felt good about today as I feel that after several visits I was beginning to learn how this lake behaved.

The groundbait was mixed, handfuls of hemp thrown in plus quite a few maggots. The selected hookbait today was sweetcorn, scopex and strawberry flavoured along with the 'normal' kind. I would switch to meat later on when it had hardened up.


I kept seeing signs of fish moving over the bait. The float kept registering line bites and occasionally going under but with nothing attaching itself to the hook. Initailly I put this down to small roach or rudd having a field day on my free offerings whilst not caring for the hook bait.


This was becoming increasingly frustrating however two hours into the session I did manage to land this beauty:




Through all the frustration of the weed I did manage quite a few carp between 1 and 2 pound and a few tench plus 1 or 2 roach.


At 12 I had finally reached the end of my tether and decided that a change of tactics might be in order. I began to feed both swims with cubes of meat before setting up my feeder rod. I thought that as I was fishing quite close in I could free line some meat in the hope that it would get to the bottom without any interference from the weed. Here's the second swim:


Almost instantaneously the swims came alive and I was catching small(ish) carp at a nice rate of knots.

I also managed to land a couple of good ones like these below:

I ended the day with a good head of fish and a valuable lesson learnt. Do not be afraid to change if your oringal plan doesn't work out. The fish were obviously there and the change of tactics and bait worked a treat.

Tight Lines.