2014 10 May 8th Hare Lake, Gabriels Farm Fishery, Edenbridge

Due to work commitments I had to have a day off on a Thursday rather than my usual Friday. For this outing I decided to make a return visit to Gabriel's Fishery, only this time I would fish Hare Lake.

I arrived at the fishery at 7:02 (it opens at 7 am). The weather was 10.5 degrees with the sky very overcast. There was as yet no wind.

When I arrived at the car park there was already two cars there. A shock for a Thursday. The occupant of one of the cars got out and we had a chat. It turned out that this was his first visit and that he too intended to fish Hare. He disappeared off and I loaded up the trolley. When I arrived at Hare I discovered that he was in the very swim I'd planned to fish. Another bad omen?

After a quick look round the lake I decided to fish the lilies at the bottom of the lake. One because it looked fishy, and two because the surrounding trees might offer me some protection if the rain came. As it happens the trees caused me more problems than they solved.

I was set up and ready to make my first cast by 8 am. I intended to fish light today as the lake really only contains roach and bream in any serious numbers and the carp that I have caught from there are at most about 3 lb.

My first cast never hit the water as I managed to hook the tree to my left. It wouldn't be the only time. The second cast was spot on. I didn't have to wait long for the float to dip. The culprit was a small skimmer bream.

The rest of the first hour was quite fruitful. I managed to bag a further eight bream and three roach. Ominously though it had begun to rain quite hard.

With the umbrella up I continued to fish using corn as the bait instead of the maggots that I used in the first hour. The activity in the swim had died to such an extent that I only managed to catch 4 by 13.30. Three of them were carp , two small and one about 3 lb. The other was a skimmer bream. 

My mate who had nicked my intended swim moved about 10:30 and then I saw him go home about 2:30 pm!

The afternoon session was really hard work. The wind was causing me untold problems. I went into the trees a further 4 times. The number of tangles it caused was pretty soul destroying. Did I catch anything? Well I managed to add a roach, a bream and two more small carp before I finally threw in the towel at 5:00 pm.

I did have this fella for company though.

I'll have to go back and try this lake again later on in the season. Hopefully this time no one will be in my swim!