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Today, I decided to pay another visit to Gabriel's Farm on the outskirts of Edenbridge.
Lake choice today was going to be Swallow as I fancied landing a haul of the lake's fighting small carp. Great fun on light tackle.
I arrived at the fishery bang on opening time at 7am.
I drove down the track to the car park nearest to Swallow lake. On arrival, as expected, I found it empty which meant that I had my choice of swims.
The lake is quite small with two or three islands in it. I decided to fish towards the biggest island where the channel was the largest.
As per the rules I was only going to use one rod today. I was, therefore, set up and ready to make my first cast at 8:10.
For bait I intended to use nothing except pellets. I had found this approach to be very successful in the past.
I was into the small carp straight away although the start was slower than previous visits. I would have expected about ten however I only got five.
Surprisingly the next hour was even slower. Only two carp made the virtual net. I could tell there were fish about so it was obviously me that was the problem.
To that end I decided to change the size of the pellet, I changed from 8mm to 6mm. The result was even worse as only one more carp made the net. Three hours down and only 8 carp caught, the day wasn't panning out as expected.
Usually the fishing slows a tad once the sun comes out however this day was different as the next hour six carp made the virtual net.
As it happens that flurry turned out to be a flash in the pan as the next hour only yielded one fish. What a day I was having.
This family kept me company all day.
From 13:00 until I packed up at 17:10 the fishing remained the same, slow and steady. The net was increased by 14 carp making the total for the day 29.
Perhaps the carp were eating these tadpoles rather than my pellets!
Ready for action shot!
Considering I normally catch around 100 fish a session from this lake I can only say that this was a very disappointing session.
Today I decided to pay another visit to the club's mixed fishery at Nursery Fields near Edenbridge in Kent.
I arrived at the fishery around 7am. I quickly unloaded the car and set off up the lake. Today I intended to fish the swim right at the top.
There was no one around my intended swim and so I knew that I was in for a quiet day!
It was the usual two rod set up today. A waggler line fished straight in front of me and a small leger on a feeder rod fished as close to the island as possible.
I was ready to make my first casts about 8:05. The first hour for me is really just a settling in period. That is allowing the swim time to develop. I knew that initially the loose feed would attract the lake's small roach and so I wasn't disappointed that the first fish of the day, attracted to the corn, was indeed, a roach.
The second and last of the first hour was one of lake's hard fighting tench.
The next hour was an almost identical copy of the previous one except that the roach and tench was joined by a nice skimmer bream.
The action really slowed down during the next hour. I only managed to bag two small roach.
Between 11:00 and 12:00 things did not get any better. One roach and another tench made the the virtual net. I began to think that a change of bait was required.
I decided to make the switch to meat. Initially I used very small cubes with the intention of increasing the size as when it was successful.
I must say it wasn't a great success. I only managed to add a further 4 fish to the virtual net before I packed up at 18:00. They were, in order of appearance, a tench, a barbel, an ide and a roach.
So how did the feeder line fare I hear you ask. I managed to catch three fish, 2 more tench and a nice carp which came in at 9lb 10oz. The carp was caught in the first hour.
So that was it for a pretty disappointing session. Just the 15 fish making the net. Better luck next time I hope.
