2015 06 April 10th Chittenden, Edenbridge

Another Friday and another visit to the club's carp lake at Chittenden. I was feeling confident today for two reasons, the first, was that during the week the weather had warmed up to such an extent I was sure I was going to take my coat off and secondly because this time last year I caught my personal best carp.

I left home at 6:25 with the temperature in the car reading 7 degrees. Lovely. I arrived at the fishery at 7 am on the dot. There were two cars in the car park already. I did a quick scan of the pond to determine whether or not my swim was free. Good news, it was!

When I arrived at the swim and unpacked my gear I discovered that my feeder reel had an empty spool on it! So, only one rod, the float one would be used today. What a silly boy.

Undeterred I set up my heavier float rod with a 3 bb waggler, 6 lb main line with a size 18 hook on a 2.8 lb hook length. For ground bait it was brown crumb, some red attractor, corn, hemp, halibut pellets and some castors that I had left over from last week's session.

I made my first cast at 8 am. Initially I used a single red maggot. Usually the pond's bream are the first to show and then as the feed builds in the swim the carp move in. It was no surprise then that the first fish in the net was a bream. The second was a small roach. That was it for the first hour.

I was still using maggots on the hook in the second hour. Good job I did because the next time the float dipped the rod bent over and the fish swam away! It wasn't huge by the pond's standards but I still played it carefully. My reward was this perch of 2 lb 9 oz. I didn't know the pond held any perch!

I decided the time was right for a change of bait when I got no other interest in the maggots after the perch was caught. I went on corn. For two hours there was no interest shown in the corn either. Good news though, I'd taken my coat off!

Finally the float went away and I knew straight away I was into a carp. I took my time as the hook length was only 2.5 lb. Eventually my patience was rewarded when the carp came to the surface and then the net. It was 7 lb 8 oz. A welcome relief I can tell you.

The first hour in the afternoon was slow again. I did get a fish though, it was another bream.

It was another sixty minutes before I caught another fish. True to form it was another bream.

The next four hours remained very quiet only one more bream made the virtual net. At 18:00 I decided to call it a day. I'd caught seven fish which wasn't what I'd expected. I will have to try again at a later date.