2014 21 August 1st Chittenden, Edenbridge

Another Friday summer visit to Chittenden. After the carp losing disaster of my most recent trip to Nursery Fields I was keen to see if I could land a few without any of the problems I'd experienced there.

Up at 5 am and on the road by 5:45 meant that I got to the fishery just before 6:30. Just the one car in the car park so I knew I would be able to have a good choice of swims.

I loaded the trolley up and headed off down the lake. On the way I passed the new stock pond. The plants are coming on well. Also I did see a fish or two on the surface. There is something in there then! I also spotted an empty can of luncheon meat, will people never learn?

I was set up and the swim fed by 7:23. In the time between arriving and being ready to start fishing a few other anglers had arrived and were set up on the near side by the islands.

A usual for Chittenden I started off using a single piece of corn on the hook. Seven fish in the first hour was a fast start. There was 5 bream, a roach (rare for Chittenden) and a carp of  8.5 lb.

I'd had some meat left over from my previous trip which I had frozen when I got home. This meant that it was in a condition which I could use on the hook. I switched to meat for the second hour. The bream wern't interested but a carp of 5 lb 6  oz was.

I switched back to corn for the next hour. Again the bream didn't play ball. A carp of 7 lb 14 oz did though.

Another change for the fourth hour, this time it was back to the meat. Still no bream, perhaps they had gone on their summer holidays? I did get two more carp though, one of 8 lb 12 oz and a slightly smaller one of 5 lb 14 oz.

Around 12:30 I changed hook baits again, this time to soft hook able pellets. Again no bream and again a solitary carp of 5 lb 10 oz.

For the lunch break period I switched back to corn. Again no bream but another carp, this one 6 lb 14 oz. I definitely wasn't complaining about the lack of bream as the carp were all putting up a good fight. I was really enjoying myself.

As the afternoon session started I was back on the meat. This time I caught my best carp of the day a 9 lb 14 oz specimen. As a bonus I also nabbed a bream, they were back!

My last fish of the day was caught at 15:47 and was also a carp. This one had a liking for pellets and weighed 6 lb 9 oz.

I lost very few fish during the day so the problems I had with the carp on my previous outing must just have been down to one of those days. In the end I caught 16 fish, most of them carp. A good and enjoyable day.

2014 20 July 27th Nursery Fields, Edenbridge, Kent

Today was going to be another afternoon/evening session at the club's mixed fishery at Nursery Fields in Edenbridge.

I arrived at the fishery at around 2:30 pm which I hoped would give me at least 6 hours fishing time. The weather was very hot and so I was surprised to see only three cars in the car park. I mean it was a Sunday.

Usually I go to the top of the lake and spend the afternoon and evening sitting behind two buzzers but today I thought I would concentrate on one rod and fish the waggler. This was mainly to see if I could tempt the lake's carp into feeding a little closer in.

With only three cars in the car park I wasn't surprised to find my swim unoccupied. I set up the waggler rod, plumbed the depth, mixed the ground bait and was ready to make my first cast at 15:30.

Instead of the usual mixture of hook baits, I decided today to concentrate just on meat. I was really just going for the carp today. If I got a good tench or barbel then that would be a bonus.

I didn't have long to wait for the first bite. The float went, I struck and off went the carp for a run. When it got to the reeds on the far side it turned and spat the hook out! I was gutted but none the less I re-baited the swim and cast again.

Unfortunately the above scenario repeated itself a further five or six times during the session. I knew by the end that I must have been doing something wrong. I normally miss a couple as I suppose does everyone else but I was getting the hook spat out every time.

When I got home I contacted the Maggotdrowning forum for some assistance. See the link below for their response.

http://www.maggotdrowning.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=174387&SearchTerms=HELP

I did manage to catch 16 fish during the session, they consisted mainly of bream and tench however I did catch one barbel right at the end. As for the carp I did land one!

So, in conclusion my plan did work as far as getting a good number of carp to come in and feed on the meat quite close in, the down side of course was that I couldn't land any!

I will try this tactic again, taking on board the help I've received and see what happens.

2014 19 July 18th Hare Lake, Gabriels Farm Fishery, Edenbridge

Today I thought for a change I would make a return trip to Gabriel's farm to see how the fishery performed during the summer months.

The fishery doesn't open until 7 am so today I had a bit of a lay in! Anyway I arrived at the gates at 6:50 to find them already open! I drove the mile or so to the lakes to find a couple of cars already there.

I had made the decision to fish Silver Lake today but when I got to my favorite peg the reeds that were just in front of the platform in May were now so thick it would have made retrieving any fish caught very difficult. Because of this I decided to try my favorite swim on Hare lake instead.

I was set up and ready to make my first cast at around 7:40. Unlike the previous week today was going to be a hot one as already I was down to my t-shirt! That's the British weather for you!

I started on corn over a ground bait mix of crumb, meat, pellets, corn and hemp which was fed close to the reeds on the far side. I was rewarded in the first hour with six fish made up of rudd, roach and bream.

The second hour was a bit slower, only three fish made the virtual net. A bream, a roach and the first carp of the day, albeit only about 1.5 lb.

The third hour brought in 8 fish, two of them carp (around a pound) and the other six were roach. They all fell to a piece of corn.

The next hour was the quietest so far with just 1 small roach falling victim to the magic corn.

As I entered the lunch period the sun was really beating down on me so for a change I put my umbrella up to protect myself from the effects of its rays. Two bream and a roach made the virtual net in that hour.

I decided after lunch that it would be a good time to switch hook baits. I had prepared some small cubes of meat the night before and now was the time to give them a try. I was rewarded with 2 roach and a carp of 1.5 lb.

For the next hour I switched baits to small hook able pellets. No surprise what I caught, three more roach in the 2 to 3 ounce category.

I went back on the corn in another attempt to catch something other than a roach. Well I sort of succeeded as I managed to get a bream and a roach.

By the time I packed up at 17:30 when the sun had finally taken it's toll on me I'd added another two roach to the net making the day's overall total 33.

In conclusion, it was another day where I either I han't really succeeded or the lake is just top heavy with roach of 2 or 3 ounces.

2014 18 July 11th Chittenden, Edenbridge

Another midweek trip to the club's carp lake at Chittenden.

I was up at 5 am and out on the road by 5:45. Everything was going smoothly until I approached the gate at Nursery Fields! Oops wrong place! I turned the car round and somewhat red faced headed back towards Chittenden.

When I finally arrived, there was one other car in the parking area. I could see that the owner was situated on the far side of the first island. In terms of the weather it was just beginning to spit with rain.

I unloaded the car and made my way down to the bottom of the lake. As I made my way down the rain began to get noticeably harder.

Setting up in the rain is not much fun however as I had no choice so I got on with it. I was ready to make my first casts at around 7:30.

By the time I starting fishing the rain was really coming down so even with the umbrella up it was very difficult to write notes for this report and keep the notebook dry. I decided therefore to just keep a tally of the total fish caught for the day and how many of them were carp.

As regards setup I made a decision at the end of my last session at Chittenden that I would use 6 lb main line and size 14 hooks on the waggler set up to lessen the chances of losing good fish.

Corn was my initial bait of choice on the waggler and 15 mm strawberry boillies were my choice for the feeder rod.

The corn attracted the bream very quickly which I took to be a good sign. They were all in the range 0.5 lb to 2 lb which for me was very good.

After a couple of hours the bream seemed to disappear so I decided to change to halibut hook able pellets.

This change seemed to work well as I managed to catch my best carp of the day and a double at that (10 lb 2 oz).

This mirror was caught at 9:15.

This one was caught at 10.06.

This one was caught at 10:42.

This one was caught at 18:12.

There was a let up in the weather around 3 pm which to be honest saved me from packing up at 4 pm. I stayed till 6:30 pm in the end. However despite the respite in the weather I was still cold, dirty, wet and miserable.

By the time I finally packed up I'd caught 37 fish of which 17 were carp and the other 20 were bream.

Aside from the weather I'd had a good day. My plan to beef up my terminal tackle worked as I only lost 2 or 3 fish during the day.