2017 4 April 7th Chittenden, Edenbridge, Kent

For my fourth outing of the year I chose to visit the club's carp lake at Chittenden near Edenbridge in Kent. My last visit had produced two early season doubles so I was full of confidence for the day ahead.

I arrived at the venue around 7am to find that I was the second one there. I unloaded the car and made my way down the lake to my favoured swim.

For the first time this year, I started the day fishing with two rods, the first, a float rod with 6lb main line and the second, a feeder rod with a small bomb on 8lb line.

As far as bait went, for the float rod I decided to start on corn and for the feeder rod it would be 10mm Tutti Fruitti boillies.

I was ready to make my first casts at 8am. The float shot out and I settled down in my chair ready for the action, if any, to begin.

I didn't have to wait long for my first bite of the day. The float shot away and I was into my first carp of the day, when it made the net I estimated it to be between 5 and 6lb. Not a bad start.

By the end of the first hour, I'd caught another carp of about 3lb and a small bream making my total for the day 3.

By noon I'd caught my first carp on the feeder rod, it was in the 7lb bracket, nice but no monster. Because of the long quiet spell on the corn I decided to change to 6mm halibut pellets.

An hour later and my decision to swop had been vindicated as I caught another two carp, one of around 9lb and the other about 4lb.

By 14:20, I'd added another carp of about 3lb from the pellet rod to the virtual net accompanied by a 2lb bream from the feeder rod.

In addition to halibut pellets I also had some crab flavoured ones and it was these that were responsible for the two carp that made the net in the next hour. Again no monsters, one was 4lb and the other around 3lb. Total for the day was now 10.

Bream also like crab as I discovered when another one made the virtual net.

By the time I packed up at 17:30 I'd caught another three carp, the largest of which was about 9lb. I was a bit annoyed that I had to keep estimating the sizes because my digital scales decided to play up. Of course when I looked at them at home they worked perfectly fine!

So the total for the day was 14. I was pleased with that, there weren't any monsters but I had enjoyed myself and that's what it's all about. One bonus was that it was hot all day so much so that I went home with a sunburnt face!