Taking that in mind I decided to have a go at the club's Christmas Mill pond.
The lake isn't accessible until 7am so there was no need to leave home at the crack of dawn. The previous evening I'd used GOOGLE MAPS to show me where it was and so when I left at 6:30 I was confident I knew where I was going.
I found the lane easy enough and made my way down until I reached the small car park. I unloaded the car but before I made my way to the lake I thought I would walk through the woods till I found the swims (there are only 5). I followed the path into the woods and after about 50 yards I saw the lake. The woods were quite thick and went right to the waters edge making fishing impossible. I carried on following the path and finally made it to a small cutting containing a park bench. On the bench it said 'Botany Bay'. It was as good a place to start as any so I went back to the car for my gear.
The swim looked very fishy, about two rod lengths out there was a set of lily pads. Strangely they weren't very thick. I decided to fish right in front of them. I left the feeder rod in its case today as I wanted to learn the water first.
I mixed up a bowl of ground bait and left it to settle while I set up the float rod. The weather was warm and still so I decided to use a 2bb waggler. I had no idea what if anything I would encounter so went for a size 18 hook with the idea of starting with single maggot.
I made my first cast at 8:00am. The first hour was quite slow. I didn't panic though as I believed that the feed would draw any fish in. I was right, after 30 minutes the float moved to the side but I couldn't hook the fish. This happened several more times before I finally landed one. It turned out to be a roach of about an ounce. By 9:00am I'd added another.
Every hour I fed the swim with another ball of ground bait and some loose maggots. After the first hour I dotted the float down a bit lower. This worked as I managed to catch another 13 roach in the next hour.
None of the roach were of any great size so I made a conscious decision to start loose feeding larger baits with the intention of trying it on the hook later on in the day.
So now I was fishing with single maggot on the hook and feeding with corn every cast I landed a fish. By 11am I had caught another 8 roach and a solitary perch.
Leading up to lunchtime I kept doing the same thing as regards feed. I wanted to wait for the better fish to arrive so I resisted the urge to go on the corn too early. Another 12 roach were added to the net in this time.
The next hour followed the same pattern as the previous one, the only difference being that I only caught a further 10 roach.
After lunch I gave the corn a try, apart from the occasional knock from a small fish the going was slow. I was rewarded with a roach which was bigger than what I had been getting.
Around 2pm I experimented with a small cube of meat. After a few minutes the float dipped and I struck. Immediately I felt some non roach resistance and then the fish started to slowly move away. I was just getting prepared for a fight when the hook was spat and the fish was gone. I assume it was a bream by the way it reacted.
Of the next 10 roach caught five of them came on corn and five on maggot. I went back on maggot after I lost another fish which bolted into the lilies. This one spat the hook as well. This one was either a carp or a tench certainly not a bream.
As the afternoon began to break into early evening my plan seemed to be coming together as I lost 3 more good fish. One broken hook length and two more that spat the hook. One of them was a bream as it reacted in the same way as the first.
By the time I packed up at 18:45 I'd added another 14 roach to the total making a grand total of 82. All bar one were roach.
In conclusion I really enjoyed the day. It was back to real fishing. Turning up at the bankside not really knowing what to expect is what it is all about. The setting was fabulous. There is no doubt that I will be back in the near future.
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