With only five swims available on the four acre lake, I had to make sure I was up and out early to ensure that I got one of them.
When I arrived at the very small car park there were no other cars there so my plan had clearly worked. I unloaded the car, and started to make my way through the dense swampy woodland to the lake.
I selected Botany Bay as my swim for today as it is the only swim where you can fish alongside the lily pads. Casting wasn't going to be far today and with the knowledge that I was only likely to catch small roach I chose my match rod and a very small waggler and size 18 hook.
Today's assault was going to be spearheaded by maggots and sweetcorn. Of course ground bait would come into it as an attracter, especially for any passing bream.
With a single maggot on the hook I made my first cast at 8:20 and true enough I discovered that the swim was full of small roach. Twenty two of them made the net in the first hour alone.
Buoyed by this success I switched hook bait to corn. Only three roach but they were of a better quality.
I switched back to maggot for the next hour. The roach hadn't moved or lost their appetite as it proved when my haul read 26 roach, 1 rudd and a bream!
Another hour on corn followed, the roach had no taste for it but two bream did. The time was around 11:30 and the weather had turned for the worse. Rain was falling quite heavy now so I had to put up the umbrella.
Just before lunch I went back to the maggot and normal service was resumed, 16 roach and a solitary rudd.
After lunch, I went back on the corn but they were still not having it with just two roach making the virtual net. Every hour I was topping up the swim with ground bait and every cast I was either feeding a few maggots or a couple of grains of corn.
A return to maggots brought 16 roach and another bream. A definite pattern was emerging here!
The next hour, which brought the time to 15:20 was the most successful for the corn. It yielded 4 roach and a bream. The roach on corn were generally bigger than those caught on the maggot.
I had another throw of the dice left, bread. Could a passing tench take a fancy to it? The short answer was no but in the sixty minutes that followed two bream did.
Here's one of them:
From 16:30 until I packed up at 18:00 I returned to maggots. Eight more roach made the net but sadly for me nothing of any quality.
So with 106 fish in the net I cannot say I had a bad day. It would have been nice to have got one of the lakes larger inhabitants or even a day without rain but hey that's fishing!
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