September 3rd - Private Pond

Today I decided it was about time I did another afternoon/evening session at the club's Private pond in Oxted.

I travelled down in the rain but by the time I got to the pond it had stopped which allowed me the oppertunity to set up in some comfort.

I managed to get peg 8 which is rapidly becoming my favourite. The lily pads are quite close and the fish can be enticed out of them fairly easily. The margins area in this swim are also very productive.

I mixed up a small batch of groundbait containing mostly brown crumb. I fed a couple of generous balls into the swim along with about a 1/3 of a pint of hemp. A few grains of sweetcorn completed the carpet of bait.

My set up was a basic small waggler, 6lb main line, size 16 wide gap hook with a 5lb hook length.

My first cast (well flick in to be exact) was at 12:25.

There was an almost instant reaction to the bait in the swim but I put this down to the prolific stock of small rudd and roach. However by 2pm I'd caught 6 fish, 4 small carp, a crucian and one of the aforementioned roach.

All six fish were taken on sweetcorn or breadflake. I hadn't bothered taking any maggots as I know these would be snapped up by the smaller fish.

The next hour was much more productive, the tench showed up, a nice 2lb specimen and a 3lb common carp, both taken from the margins. The small carp were still there as I managed to bag 3 of them. The number of roach doubled as well as I had 2!

It was at this point that the heavens opened and I had to start to build a shelter on the platform. Up went the brolly which was attached to my box which was directly behind my chair making it a perfect dry fishing base. This worked well mainly due to the fact that there was no wind.

The downside of the change in the weather was that I couldn't take anymore notes so I'm writing the remainder of this entry from memory.

Despite the rain the fish continued to feed. I kept topping the two swims up with an occasional ball of groundbailt and some loose offerings. The small carp came in at about one every other cast.

I'm not sure how many I caught by the end of the session but it was over 30. I packed up around 7:30 in one of the intervals in the rain.

Was I just unlucky with my choice of days or did it really rain that much this summer?