2018 3 March 14th Boulthurst Farm, Holland, Surrey

Today I thought I would pay my first visit of the year to Holland A. S. small carp pond on Boulthurst farm near Oxted in Surrey.

It was about 8:15 when I arrived at the pond. As it was March 14th, the last day the pond was open I found it strange that the car park was empty.

There are only 4 swims on the pond so before deciding which swim I was going to fish I went down and had a look around. The first thing that struck me was that the water was very brown, not it's usual colour at all. I put this down to the amount of rain we'd had the previous few weeks. I wondered if it would affect the fishing.

I settled on the swim on the far right. It was just the one rod today so I was set up and ready to make my first cast at 8:40.

For today I decided that as the pond contained mainly carp to about 7lb I would try the following set up. My rod was a Shimano float rod designed for commercial carp fisheries, a reel with 6lb main line and a large waggler. For hook bait I was going to use 10mm boillies. I intended to fish a line about 3 rod lengths out.

I knew today was going to be a waiting game so I wasn't surprised when there was no immediate action. There was a lot of wind blowing across the pond so I had to change the float several times before I found one that I could easily see the tip of.

Thirty minutes after I'd settled down the float went under and I was into a fish. Unfortunately the hook came out of it's mouth and it was gone. Still it gave me confidence that my method was working.

It was back to the waiting game again. At 10:17 I got the bite I'd been waiting for. It didn't feel too big as it never really fought much however when I weighted it the scales read 8lb 2 oz! Success.

I continued to feed the swim with pellets and boillies throughout the day but by 15:00 in the afternoon there was no further action.

During the afternoon I spotted this fellow on the far bank.

I'd seen activity in the swim all day but assumed they were some of the pond's roach. For the last few hours I decided to switch to 2 pieces of corn as the bait.

I was right about the roach, by 16:30 when I packed up I'd caught 6 of them, all in the 3 to 4 ounce range.