2012 22 August 5th Nursery Fields, Edenbridge Kent

Today I was determined to get a century of fish after coming within 5 of that total on my last float fishing visit a week or so earlier.

For once the weather seemed to be of the typical summer variety as I left home around 6am for the 30 minute journey to the fishery.

Over the previous few days and on the journey down I decided that I would fish the reed bed on peg 15 which meant that I could fish a feeder to the island so when I got to the lake I was overjoyed to find only one other car there.

I loaded up the trolley and headed out to peg 15. Can you manage my horror when I discovered that the only other angler present had also chosen peg 15! Gobsmacked I walked past him (complete with the evil eye ‘lol’ ) and settled into to peg 7.

With all plans for peg 15 banished I mixed up a generous helping of ground bait. When it was ready I fed two large balls together with a lot of hemp and a mixture of maggots and casters. With that exercise complete I proceeded to set up my two rods.

The first was the waggler rod. As I was planning to use maggots for the bulk of the session I used a very small 2bb float to a size 18 hook on 5lb main line. The feeder rod had a small cage feeder to a size 14 on 6lb main line. Next I set the peg up so that everything was easily accessible and anything I wouldn’t need all the time was put away in the box. I was still wary of the rain!

I made my first casts at 8:09. Now if you have read any of my previous posts you will have realised I’m sure that I don’t very often break with tradition however today I did. I had decided that instead of feeding maggots every cast I would feed some Nash scopex feed pellets.

The plan seemed to work as almost immediately I was into fish. They weren’t huge but they were swimming so they all count! I normally pack up around 6pm when I’m doing an all day session so using my analytical skills I calculated that I would need 10 an hour to reach the magic ton.

How do I count them I hear you ask? Well each species is allocated a piece of bait (corn, meat etc) and then every hour or when the species caught outnumbers the bait I log the total and start again.

As I stated previously the fish were coming in thick and fast so by 8.56 I’d caught perch, gudgeon, crucian carp, roach, rudd, bream and tench for a total of 16 fish. A promising enough start to the session.

I couldn’t relax though as I was aware that the swims at NF tend to switch off during the lunch hour. I kept to the plan, maggot on the hook, pellets loose fed every cast and a generous helping of ground bait and hemp every hour.

The next hour yielded perch, gudgeon, crucian carp, roach, rudd and my first barbel of the session for 17 fish making the total 33.

For the next hour I started to experiment with corn every other fish. The catch rate slowed somewhat but I still managed to get perch, gudgeon, roach, rudd and barbel for 13 fish making the total 46.

Between 11 and 12 the bites began to dry up although I have to say I was beginning to favour the corn.  Into the net went some crucians, rudd, bream and barbel for 7 fish. The total was now 53 over halfway with six fishing hours to go. Some of the bream were quite good:

I decided as the fishing was slowing down to take a break and have my lunch. Even so I still managed in the next hour to get another crucian and four more bream. At lunch as the cricketers say the score was now 58.

After the lunch period I decided that if I wanted to hit the magic century I would have to switch back to maggots. For the next hour or so I did precisely that. I was rewarded with thirteen fish. Five of them roach. The total had moved on to 71.

Perhaps I was getting a bit over confident because during the mid-afternoon period I only managed three fish, a solitary barbel and a couple of tench. It was now 3pm and the total was 74.

The chances of hitting my target were looking pretty slim as the swim was still not producing in the afternoon as it had been in the morning. By 4pm only 4 more fish were caught, although one was a perch, the first for over 4 hours. I was still 22 away from the magic ton.    
 

The previous stated total did not include anything caught on the feeder rod. All through the day I’d been catching one or two an hour on the feeder. They totalled by the end of the session fourteen which comprised of three bream and eleven tench. When these were included the total now stood at 92 with an hour or so to go.

As the evening set in I thought I would alternate the hook bait between meat, corn and maggot. I was pretty confident that I could catch eight fish in the time so I decided to go for a better quality of fish to end the session on.

The maggots still accounted for a couple of rudd but the meat and corn brought in some good tench and three of the larger barbell. I had ten in total by the end of the session, which meant that I finished the day on 102. The objective had been met!

This is fish number 100.

As I drove home I reflected on what a great day’s fishing I’d had.