2016 20 August 12th Chittenden, Edenbridge, Kent

As it turned out today was my last trip of 2016. A combination of holiday and a new car put paid to serious maggot drowning on my part. So it was off to Chittenden, the club's carp lake for my 2016 swan(shot)song!

I was up and out of the house by 5:30 as today I was aiming to get amongst the fish before the sun could take it's effect on proceedings.

While I was setting up it came to light that I'd forgotton my boillies! What a twerp. That meant that I would only be fishing the waggler today.

I was set up and ready to make my first cast at 7 am. The swim looked good, very fishy, I was hoping for a good day.

I thought I would start on the meat today to see if there was any early morning feeders about. Sure enough there were, by the end of the first hour I'd caught a couple of fish, one bream and a carp of about 3 lb.

The next four hours were very slow. In that time I'd switched to strawberry corn and managed to get another bream. I also lost another carp but I don't think it was a monster.

Another two hours passed with only a carp of 1.5 lb, caught on meat, making the virtual net. Things were not going according to plan.

Another four hours passed before I caught another fish on meat. This one was a small roach!

It was now 18:00 and with just 5 fish caught in the day I decided to call time on this session and as it turned out the season as well.

2016 19 August 6th Nursery Fields, Edenbridge

On this early August day I planned to venture out to the club's mixed fishery at Nursery Fields just outside of Edenbridge in darkest Kent.

It was back to the standard all day session today which meant that I was up and out of the house in time to arrive at the fishery around 6:30.

Upon arrival I unloaded the car and headed off to the back of the lake where I intended to fish today.

This is the waggler rod's swim:

This is the feeder rod's swim:

As I've stated in a previous blog entry it takes me about an hour from arrival to first cast. I usually set up the feeder rod first as I can cast it out and if the buzzer goes I am in a position to react straight away. Well that is exactly what happened today. The result was a nice carp of around 5.5 lb which had a liking for tutti fruitti boillies.

Due to this pleasant interruption I didn't make my other first cast until 8.05.

The next bite didn't come on the waggler as I expected but on the feeder rod. It was 8:05 and the culprit was a 2 lb tench.

An hour later and I'd bagged another tench of the same size on the same rod and bait.

Today's bait of choice on the waggler rod was strawberry flavoured corn. It wasn't until 12:05 that I managed to get my first fish on it. The culprit was one of the lake's bream.

From noon until 15:05 the swim went very quiet. I did catch though, the feeder rod chipped in with another tench and because I had switched from corn to meat on the waggler rod I landed a roach and another bream.

My last fish of the session came in at 16:05 and was another bream with a taste for meat. I then decided to cal it a day.

So after a great start the session went completely downhill. Still that's fishing and that's why we love it.