The week leading up to the Saturday had been really hot so I assumed that there would be a fair few at the fishery today and so because of this I left home early enough so that I would be there as the gates open. The temperature was 15.5 according to the car and it wasn't even 6:30 yet, lovely.
I arrived just before 7am to find two other cars in the car park. Lucky for me they turned out to carpers from the night before. Before I loaded up the trolley I took my rod holdall to the swim and 'bagged' it! I then took all my equipment, minus fleece, sweatshirt and coat to the swim.
I could see the effects of loads of life in the water as fish after fish was topping. I felt I was in for a good day.
I prepared my normal groundbait mix and then set up my float rod with a 3bb waggler rig. I decided I could get away with increasing the amount of initial feed and so with that in mind I fed 2 very large balls of groundbait coupled with a very generous helping of maggots.
I made my first cast at 7:36.
I decided to start on double maggot as for the first time this season I began a session on a size 16 hook. In went the bait and down went the float, the result was a roach of about a couple of ounces.
The small carp on my last visit didn't show up until mid morning however today they were there from the start. They displayed a liking for my maggots. By 8:12 I'd caught 3 carp, 3 roach, 3 rudd and a solitary bream.
My best carp from this lake came in this first half hour. A 4.25lb specimen which I wasn't expecting to get on 2 maggots!
I then swopped hook bait to strawberry flavoured corn to see what effect that would have. It took a while to take off but when it did they went for it big time. By 10:22 I'd caught another 8 carp, a bream and a rudd. The rudd was a good one going about half a pound I would say.
I decided to switch hook baits again, this time to small cubes of meat. This did not turn out to be a good move as by 11:42 I'd only had one more small carp and a rudd although this rudd appeared to be the twin of the one described in the previous paragraph.
After the failure of the meat I switched back to maggot and the next half hour saw six carp, and 1 of 1 each of bream, rudd, roach and my first perch of the session.
Confidence restored I switched back to corn, this time the normal flavoured variety. By this time the sun was high in the sky as was the temperature. I could feel myself beginning to burn. My sunscreen was in the garage in my other box so that was no help! The hottest part of the day coincided with a slowing down of the day's action. In fact in took the best part of three hours to land ten fish. These were 5 roach, 4 carp and a perch with a liking for corn.
The time now was just after 3 in the afternoon. Dismayed by the poor results of the corn I went back to maggots and in 20 minutes had another ten fish. Five roach, 4 bream and just the one carp.
The strength of the sun was now beginning to take it's toll on me but I wanted to fish on if only for a while until the evening session started. I was concerned that apart from the early carp I hadn't had anything of any size and to this end I began to up the size of the baits and to introduce bread flake.
Unfortunately this ploy did not bring the bigger fish out to play either. The small carp (6) and roach (4) were still the main diners.
After one more small carp I decided to pack up. The time was 18:00.
In conclusion, I had a good day relative to my recent disappointment at Broxham. I caught 72 fish which can never be regarded as a bad thing. It was a shame only one of lakes larger inhabitants showed up although a rudd of half a pound is a good fish.
Wildlife Report:
Apart from having a swan swim past me (the first I've seen at this fishery) the only thing of note to mention was that a couple of Canadian Geese families took up residence on the bank next to me for a great proportion of the day.
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