2018 01 March 7th Dunks Pond, Holland, Oxted, Surrey

My 2018 season started off today with a visit to Holland Angling Society's pond near Oxted in Surrey.

I hadn't fished the pond for many years however I did know that it contained predominately roach and perch plus a few carp to around 3lb. Of course things could have changed in the intervening years.

I arrived at the pond about 8:15. The weather wasn't great - it was raining nice and steady however the forecast said that it was due to stop about 11am. It wasn't really cold so that was good.

I unloaded the car and carried my gear to my swim (didn't need to use my trolley as the walk was short).

As this was my first outing of the season I wanted to keep things simple so I decided to only use one rod today. Before I started to set up I fired out some maggots about 2 rod lengths from the bank.

My set up today was a match rod with 4lb main line to a size 20 with a  2.5lb hook length.

I was set up and ready to make my first cast at 9:15.

I was into small roach almost immediately. I was firing out a few maggots every cast and this seemed to keep them interested. By the end of the first hour I'd caught 5 roach, a pleasing start for the time of year.

For the next hour I fed maggots and hemp, not a great amount but enough to keep them interested (or so I thought). By 11:30 my total for the day had risen to 12 with the addition of 4 roach and 3 perch.

I followed the same pattern for the next hour with the exception that at the beginning of the hour I fed the swim with grains of corn. This was my slowest hour so far as only 1 roach made the virtual net.

I stuck to my guns for the next hour and was rewarded with a perch and three roach. The sport wasn't great but it was enough to keep me alive in the conditions. The rain stopped when it said it would so I was glad of that.

At 15:00 I made the decision to have a try with corn. I'm glad I did as the float on hitting the water went down almost immediately. The result was a carp of about a 1lb.

Between 15:00 and 16:35 when the weather finally got to me and I decided to pack up, my total for the day had risen to 25. This consisted of 1 perch, 1 roach and 5 small carp, all caught on corn.