2016 18 July 30th Chittenden, Edenbridge, Kent

Today it was back to club's carp water at Chittenden after a brief sojourn to Bouthurst Farm.

The differnce today was that instead of a day long sesssion I planned to leave at lunchtime and fish into the evening. I would finish before I needed a torch to let myself out.

I was out of the house and on the road in time to reach the fishery at 13:10. There were a few anglers there but not as many as I expected.

I unloaded the car and headed down the lake to my chosen swim of the day. You do work up a bit of a sweat pulling that trolley in the summer heat.

Today was going to be a carp session featuring my two carp rods and some lovely tangerine dream and tutti fruitti boillies. I intended to use maize as feed in the swims. As a bonus I had a combination of hemp, pellets and other assorted boillies which I was also going to use as an addititional attractor.

I had both swimis fed and both rods set up to make my first casts at 14:10. What would today bring? That's the joy of fishing, we never reallly know.

This was my swim to the left.

This was the swim to my right.

The first time the bleeper went off was at 15:06, alas I lost this one. It felt about 5 lb or so and came on the tangerine dream rod.

An hour and 25 minutes later the other buzzer went off, this one I did get in, unfortunately it was a bream of about a pound. The tutti fruitt rod was one up on the day.

Fifteen mnutes later and I'd bagged my first carp of the day. It was 6 lb and came in on the Tangerine Dream rod.

Between 16:45 and 17:59 I lost a further three carp, the second of the three actually took the boillie on the drop,. I had now lost four fish. I began to get worried that I was doing something wrong.

The setup:

At 18:15 I was back on track. This one weighed 7 lb and fell to a tutti fruitti boillie. The run of misses had been broken. Confidence had been restored.

Fifteen minutes later and again on tutti fruitti I landed another carp of 6 lb or so.

At 19:30 the buzzer went off and I was into another one. After a few minutes of playing the fish and with it now being close to the bank I noticed that the line was tangled around the reel and that I wouldn't be able to retreive anymore line. I took the line and keeping tight managed to guide the fish to the net! The result was 5 lb carp.

I caught my last and biggest carp at 19:50. It weighed 9 lb and came in on the Tangerine Dream rod.

So that was it for the day. I was worried about the lost fish so I enquired on Maggotdrowners and the advice given was that 15 mm boillies on a size 14 drennan hair rig was imbalanced. I shall, in future, change my set up when fishing this method.