June 13th Private Pond, Hurst Green, Surrey

A rare outing for me on a Saturday due in the main to having a too many beers the previous Thursday and suffering for it on Friday.

One of the advantages of going on the Saturday of this particular week was that the weather for June had been pretty bad leading up to the weekend. There was relatively cold weather plus rain storms. The forecast for the day was 22 degrees with a slim chance of rain.

I was up at 5am and on the road by 5:50. Not surprisingly there was no traffic and within 35 minutes (it's only 17 miles) I pulled up at the fishery. There was one car there already, my mate from my previous visit. He had set up on the far side so I went in the opposite direction to peg 1.

The pond is about 2 acres in size, maybe a little less. Here is the view from peg 1 which is in the corner.

There are considerably more sets of lily pads on the far side of the island.

I selected 3 lines to fish - the first directly in front of me, which to be honest started off very slow and never really recovered. While I was trying it I could see movement by the lily pads off to my right all the time.

This is line 1 which I abandoned after the first hour. I was fishing midway across.

As my last visit to the venue was a success (by my standards) I decided to initially adopt the same tactics.

For tackle, I set up my 12' float road with 5lb main line and a size 16 hook. I used a 3 no 4 crystal waggler float which I set up for maximum sensitivity which was to pay dividends later.

For goundbait I used the usual mix of brown crumb, sweetcorn, some red attractor and scopex flavoured water. For hookbait I had with me, maggots, bread, sweetcorn, scopex flavoured sweetcorn and meat. I also had a small bucket of hemp which I fed every cast.

My initial casts caught the usual small roach and rudd. After 30 minutes or so of small fish on maggot I switched to scopex flavoured corn. Only one or 2 small (very) carp came to the net.

As stated above, after the first hour I switched to line 2 (see below) which is nice little swim right in the corner of the pond. At the most it's only 2 foot deep however there were signs of life all day around it. Some larger carp were also showing in the pads feeding.

I started off on the scopex corn and was immediately successful with a string of small carp plus one or two tench and the occasional crucian carp. Eventually the corn stopped working so I thought I'd try some bread. Here's where having the float set low paid off as almost a crucian a cast was brought to the net! I'd never caught more than 1 at a time and here I was getting a netful!

I have to comment that some of the tench did look rather thin. This one a 2lb example (my best of the season so far) fell to breadflake.

When I made my initial enquiries about the pond I was told that there were 5 perch in there, well I caught one of them on a piece on scpex corn! It was about a half pound. Going back to the bread I managed to catch some quality roach, not monsters but ones you have to use the landing net for. I reckon I got about half a dozen of these specimens.

At around 3:30 in the afternoon the float shot away and this just under 4lb carp was in the net.

The rest of the afternoon pretty much followed the same pattern as the rest of the day with the exception that I began to feed small cubes of meat into line 3, the margins to my left (see photo below).

By 17:30 I decided to give the swim above a go. Less than a minute after casting in with a cube of meat as bait the float slid away, I hit it and all hell let loose. The rod bent over as the fish headed for the lily pads in the centre of the pond. Dam, it had made it. I kept applying pressure and a short while later it came out. I then had it going up and down in front me which gave me the confidence to reach for the landing net. As I contemplated this move the fish rolled and broke the hooklength! I was gutted.

I put the experience down to only having a size 16 hook on so I fed a large handful of meat into my original swim by the lilys plus 2 or 3 large handfuls of maggots and set up again this time with a size 14 hook. Cast out again, no more than a minute later the float shot away and after striking the fish dug itself into the nearby lily pads. This time the hooklength snapped as I begun to apply pressure. Even more gutted than before!

I sat on my box for a few minutes contemplating whether or not to call it a day. Finally I talked myself into giving it one more shot. The rest of the maggots and meat were dispatched into the same swim as before and I re-cast to the same spot. Not an instant take this one, I had to wait for about 5 minutes before the float went and I struck. Off it went, not into the nearby pads this time but the ones in the middle of the pond. Applied pressure and sure enough it came out. When it rolled on the surface I had a good look at it. The blood pressure rose but I kept my cool. The fish was now going across in front of me but unlike before I banished all thoughts of the landing net until it was good and ready. It finally decided to have one last bolt for freedom which as it arrived on the far side of the pond it got! It had spat the hook out! At that point I was ready to jump in after it!

I decided it was time to call it a day. On reflection it was a great days fishing. I must have caught close to 100 fish. Although the last hour was a bit of a failure I do know 2 things, the first is, there are good fish in there and secondly, that I can hook them. I'll be back for them that's for sure.

Tight Lines.