April 16th Mill Lake, Stubpond, Felbridge Surrey

After the best part of 2 weeks back at work I had worked up enough time to have another flexi day, so off I went to Stubpond for another session.

I arrived about 20 minutes before the official opening but was let in by the workers from the firm that are on the next premises along.

The weather was better than my previous visit - 2 weeks before as can be seen from the photo below:

I went to my swim and set up my gear. After that was complete I went to pay my money. On my return I could sense something was different but couldn't put my finger on it. My hemp container was on it's side (with the lid on) - I knew it was ok when I left. This made me check my bait tray and sure enough my bait box containing my meat had been completely emptied!

I thought it was the wild cats that live in the fishery although I hadn't seen any that morning. Anyway I decided to go the hut and see if the bailiff had any meat for sale. When I got there I realised who the culprit was - it was the owner's great dane! I had been Scooby-Doo'ed!

As luck would have it the owner had no tins of meat but as I had plenty of bait (sweetcorn, bread and maggots) I really wasn't to dispondent. The owner did give me a tin of paste and a tub of drilled pellets to try - I've never used either!

I fed the swim with a couple of good sized balls of groundbait and about half a pint of hemp. This constitutes a large amount of hemp for me. I was curious to see the result.

It must have been around 8:30 or so by the time I eventually stared fishing. I started on single maggot but quickly changed to bread because I didn't want to spend the day catching small (very) Roach and Rudd.

By 9:09 3 fish had been caught on bread: 2 Roach and 1 F1 Carp. (See below)

During the next hour I tried some sweetcorn and for the first time in 2010 I caught fish on it! The second hour yielded 1 Roach and 1 Bream on sweetcorn and a small Mirror Carp on bread plus this bigger mirror carp.

At lunchtime I set up my feeder rod and began to feed and use 10mm Monster Crab bollies.

By 14:00 I had managed to net the following:
1 2lb Common Carp on sweetcorn
1 4lb Common Carp on boiilies

10 assorted Roach, Carp, F1's and Crucians.

The 2 larger carp were caught straight after each other.

At various times during the day I'd been trying the paste - confidence using it was low (I'm not good with new things) but at 14:28 I got lucky when a carp took a fancy to it and my duck was broken.

To be honest I was concentrating on bread as I had the feeling that this was the bait of the day and I was proved right when at 15:18 I landed a 5lb common and again at 16:19 when I landed a 6 pounder.

The boillies were still working as well because at 17:01 I caught my final carp - a 3lb Mirror.

For once I did have some company during the day! See below:

So apart from the carp mentioned above the final 3 hours brought me 11 assorted Roach/Rudd and Bream mainly on bread but some on sweetcorn.

The day was not over for me yet in terms of incidents. As I pack up I like to have a cup of tea. Having packed up and drunk my tea I went to take the top off of the flask to get rid of the dregs when there was one almighty bang as the flask exploded!

Sone guys have all the luck (bad)