25th July Boulthurst Farm, Nr Limpsfield Surrey

Come the long summer months, I often take the opportunity to visit this small pond on a Sunday afternoon for a few hours free lining a piece of meat in the margins.

I arrived around 3pm and set up in the end swim nearest to the car park. As you can see from the photo below I used my feeder rod and 6 lb main line curtesy of the Angling Times.

For groundbait I took a tin of sweetcorn which over the course of the session I fed into the swim above and to the one on the other side whilst fishing the cubes of meat over the top.

Sometimes if the fish are in the area bites can come quite quickly however as a general rule, after 5 and before dark are the best times. This one was taken just after 6pm.

I reckon that the 5 hour session produced about a half a dozen carp but the number caught isn't really the point. It's the adrenaline rush that comes when a carp takes the meat and the rod bends round or even sometimes heads for the pond that does the trick.

Tight Lnes

July 23rd Mill Lake Stubpond Fishery Fellbridge Surrey

After an absence of nearly 3 weeks I decided to pay a return visit to Stubpond.

Although the school holidays were upon us, it was midweek and there are no under
16's allowed in the fishery so I was confident of finding a decent swim on Mill Lake as usual.

To my horror there was another car parked in my usual spot nearest to the lake, had I lost my favourite swim? As luck would have it, no I hadn't, my fellow angler had obviously decided that the top of the lake was for him.

I made my way to the swim and my first impression after an absence of 3 weeks was that the weed growth had really taken control. However what I could see from the surface was nothing compared to what was beneath. The picture below gives some indication of the weed growth:

Some carp were already moving on the surface so I made sure that my set up was correct. I felt good about today as I feel that after several visits I was beginning to learn how this lake behaved.

The groundbait was mixed, handfuls of hemp thrown in plus quite a few maggots. The selected hookbait today was sweetcorn, scopex and strawberry flavoured along with the 'normal' kind. I would switch to meat later on when it had hardened up.


I kept seeing signs of fish moving over the bait. The float kept registering line bites and occasionally going under but with nothing attaching itself to the hook. Initailly I put this down to small roach or rudd having a field day on my free offerings whilst not caring for the hook bait.


This was becoming increasingly frustrating however two hours into the session I did manage to land this beauty:




Through all the frustration of the weed I did manage quite a few carp between 1 and 2 pound and a few tench plus 1 or 2 roach.


At 12 I had finally reached the end of my tether and decided that a change of tactics might be in order. I began to feed both swims with cubes of meat before setting up my feeder rod. I thought that as I was fishing quite close in I could free line some meat in the hope that it would get to the bottom without any interference from the weed. Here's the second swim:


Almost instantaneously the swims came alive and I was catching small(ish) carp at a nice rate of knots.

I also managed to land a couple of good ones like these below:

I ended the day with a good head of fish and a valuable lesson learnt. Do not be afraid to change if your oringal plan doesn't work out. The fish were obviously there and the change of tactics and bait worked a treat.

Tight Lines.

July 19th Boulthurst Farm, nr Limpsfield Surrey

As previously stated this pond only has 4 swims (one's a double). The hot one is the one at the end where the stream enters. According to the club chairman the second best one is the one at the opposite end. Today, I decided to do an afternoon/evening session here if the swim was free as I hadn't tried it before.

I arrived around 3:30 to find that one other person was there but as luck would have it he wasn't in the swim I wanted to fish.

The swim has two very nice and very different swims within it, the first follows the overgrown bank away from all the fishable spots. See below:

The second has trees and bushes hanging over the water giving about 20 yards of margin fishing before encountering the next swim by the lily pads. See below:

I fed both swims with sweetcorn and initially used sweetcorn on the hook until the luncheon meat hardened up. As usual when I fish the margins I was free-lining on my feeder rod. The sweetcorn did not attract any bites but when I switched to meat aounnd 6pm I managed to land this beauty. See below:

I then switched to the second swim while feeding the first and managed to land this carp - see below:
And so the pattern continued for the rest of the session - this one came after a further hour and 15 minutes:

I was on a roll now - 30 minutes later this one was in the net:

Ten minutes later the final fish of the day was caught. The only mirror of the session.

In conclusion a very good short session free-lining meat in the margins. I did miss a few so all was not perfect but a very enjoyable session all the same especially as I had never fished the swim before.

Tight Lines