I also hoped that the extra day might give the weather a chance to improve a bit.
As the Edenbridge main waters were still closed my venue of choice was Gabriels Fishery, the lake I wanted to fish was the match lake, Silver.
I arrived at the fishery at 6:50 and discovered that I was the only 'non carper' there so I had the choice of swims on the fishery's three non specimen lakes.
I made my way to peg 1 on Silver which currently is my favourite swim. The immediate area in front of the swim has been dug out and enlarged from last year which is ok however the reeds and lilies seemed to have gone as well which is a shame as you could tempt a carp or two out of there during the session.
My set up was pure waggler. A highly visible orange 2bb one due to the light conditions was my choice of the day. To complete the set up I used a size 18 hook, 2.5lb hook length and 4lb main line.
My groundbait was the usual mix of brown crumb with pieces of corn and meat. I also had some hemp and some old maggots/casters to use as loose feed.
I made my first cast at 7:50 bang on an hour after my arrival. For hookbait I started on single red maggot.
Almost immediately the float dipped and in came the first roach of the day. Not a specimen by any means but satisfying to know that they are around.
By loose feeding 3 or 4 maggots a cast I kept the fish coming in. The first hour yielded 1 gudgeon, 7 roach and 2 rudd. None of them were massive but all appeared to be hungry.
I was by 9am pretty confident that if I stayed on maggot I would catch fish all day so I began to experiment with the hookbait to see if I could filter out the small fish and get into something of better quality.
Unfortunately the only bait that 'worked' was castors but to be honest the fish caught weren't any bigger. By 10:15 the virtual net had grown by 2 rudd, 3 roach and 1 gudgeon.
I wasn't deterred by the lack of results on the bigger baits. I persisted with the by then established game plan, hourly groundbait feeds, 3 or 4 maggots or a few hemp seeds every cast and a rotation of hook bait. Maggots, corn, meat and casters were the baits of choice.
I continued to catch a variety of silver fish (plus one very small carp) all afternoon and was considering my disappointment of the previous week happy with the results.
Around 2:30 the float dipped in the normal way, I struck and nothing moved! My initial reaction was that I was caught on the bottom however after a moment I felt some movement. Again because of the apparent lack of response I thought I was into a largish bream but once the fish came to the surface I could see it was a good carp. Once I could see the fish it came to life and fought a lot harder. Sadly for me on this occasion it won because it came off the hook.
Now that I knew the carp in the lake were feeding I switched hook bait to bread flake. At first the float showed signs that the smaller fish were pecking at the bread but then it began to move across the surface. I struck and off went my quarry. Remembering that I only had 4lb main line I took my time playing the fish. I was rewarded for my patience with a nice 6lb'er.
The next hour or so brought 3 more carp, one 6, one 4 and one of 2.75lb. These like the first all fell to bread flake.
Now I come to the incident that soured the day for me. As previously stated because I was on 4lb main line I made sure that I played each of the fish very carefully. The result to an onlooker would have looked like I was taking too much time. While I was playing the last carp which turned out to be the second 6lb one a group of 5 people assembled behind me to watch the proceedings.
After I landed the fish (around 4:45) they asked me when I was leaving. I replied that as I was on a roll it wouldn't be for some time. One of the group said that I was in the swim he wanted (I was at that point the only person on the lake). They then went (all 5 of them) into the adjoining swim and began to cast all around my swim (including the trees!) in an attempt to move me on. I went into stubborn mode and sat it out for about an hour before calling it quits. Needless to say I got no more bites.
Anyway in addition to the above I did get 2 rudd, 7 roach, 1 small carp, 1 perch and a bream.
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