2012 20 July 20th Nursery Fields, Edenbridge, Kent

I took another Friday off from work with a plan to restore my fishing mojo which I think I’d lost five days earlier on peg 2!

I arrived at the fishery just before seven am to find the car park empty which of course meant that I would have first choice of peg.

I started walking around the bottom of the lake in ascending peg order. As the back straight starts there are some fine fishy looking pegs. Today I opted for peg 7 which for me is the perfect NF peg. It has a bed of lilies quite close in to fish to (although they are on the left of the peg) and another set on the far bank where you can drop a feeder close to.

I mixed up the usual amount of ground bait, brown crumb mixed in with samples of hook bait and fed the waggler swim heavily. I also threw in a large proportion of my freshly cooked hemp and a couple of handfuls of maggots. Next I set up the two rods.

As usual for NF I set up the float rod with as small a waggler as possible which in this case was a 2bb one and a size 18 hook on 2.5lb breaking strain hook length. The only concession to the larger carp in the water was the 5lb main line. The feeder rod I set up with a size 14 hook to 6lb hook length and main line and a small cage feeder. For bait I intended using 10ml monster crab boillies.

For the float rod I intended to start with until at least lunchtime with maggots. My plan was to keep feed going into the swim catching maybe some small fish in the hope that the continual feeding of the small fish would attract the larger ones. That was the plan anyway.

I made my first casts at 7:45. The float dipped almost straight away and I was into the first of my 14 roach. It wasn’t huge, around an ounce I would say but it was the blank breaker so it was important.

This was quickly followed by a couple of skimmer bream and one of the many small barbel that reside in this lake.

The feeder rod was also seeing some early action with two good (relatively speaking) tench coming to the net in that first hour. The signs were good that today could turn out to be a great day.

One species that you tend to get when solely using maggots is the striped predator, the perch. There are quite a few in NF however I’ve never caught anything over a couple of ounces. Today I caught seven of the little beggars.

The bream seem mostly to be skimmers although you can catch the odd one of around 2lb if you get lucky. Today I caught 8. I did notice that due I suppose to the shallowness of the water some of the skimmers actually jump out of the water in a bold strike out for freedom.

Though when you catch a good one they look absolutely fantastic the norm is that the very small rudd will gobble a maggot down as soon as it hits the water. I tend to have the bulk of the shot down the hook end when using maggots so that the bait drops quickly through the water. Today I still managed to catch eleven of them.

Nursery Field’s barbel seem to come in two sizes, the small ones which can be taken mainly on maggot and corn are about 5 to 7 inches long. The other ones around the 2lb mark. I’ve, like today tended to catch them at the end of the session on meat and sometimes corn. Fiftteen made the net today, two or three were of the latter variety.

My favourite looking fish of them all is the crucian carp. This lake appears to be full of them. I was surprised at how many could be taken on maggot. The larger ones take corn but the bites are harder to hit. By the close of play the virtual net contained seventeen of them.

No description of a session using maggot would be complete without a mention of the mighty gudgeon. You know you are fishing ‘bottom’ when you get these, an organic plummet if you will. Anyway I managed with some effort to land five of these little scrappers.

The last but by no means least of the species that I caught today is the tench. I’ve never seen one over 2lb from here but even so they do put up a decent fight. Four of them came on the waggler rod the remaining thirteen came on the feeder rod.

Sadly today was not a day for the common or mirror carp to put in appearance which was the first of only two negatives coming out of the session. The other was the weather, at around 6pm the heavens opened and I and my equipment got absolutely drenched which forced me when it finally abated to pack up and go home. Before I left I counted the fish I’d caught and the total was 95, five short of the magic ton.

I will return for another crack at the hundred very soon.