Oast Farm - Buxted 14th Feb 2009

This was the first time I'd met with the MaggotDrowners.com guy's, however when I turned up I was met with a warm welcome, which is always a good start.

I found out that there weas going only be 10 fishing today, we paid our peg fees and drew for the pegs, I drew peg 8.

Which was down a steep bank with a platform for a nice position. To my left was a large over hanging tree, straight out was open water and to the right a small bush in the water.

Having never fished here before I opted for setting up the pole at 6 meters, with one rig on the bottom and set another at about half depth. I'd brought all manner of baits, however I'd recently read an article on white pellets , I had some 4mm white feed pellets and some soft hook pellets, however the 4 mm hook pellets are very soft and when you put the hook into them they just brake up into peices. I used the faithful pellet bander and made up a few 4mm and 8 mm pellets.

At the all in I fed two swims one just to the left and the other 6 meter swim. I started to fish the 6 meter line and had bites from the off. After a few missed bites I managed to hook into a nice carp around 3-4lb. Then next bite I had another one around 2lb and it still wasn't even 9.30am.

The swim completely died so I tried the other swim and after about an hour nothing was producing at all. I tried the right hand side and still nothing, as the time was ticking and fast approaching 12.00, I went back on the 6 meter line. I started to get bites again and soon had another carp of around 2lb in the net. I was getting bites on the pellet however I was missing the fish, I noticed that the float was rocketing underwhich seemed to point out to roach more than carp, I changed to double red maggot and managed to get around 5 small roach. Then again the swim died.
I tried the righthand swim again and managed to get a small carp probably just over a 1lb.

Towards the end of the match BillG came down to see how we where all doing, He then told me I should have fished striaght out in front and fed with micro pellets and used corn on the hook. I told me you have to have confidence in this tactic as the carp will come and it could take a few hours however you must keep feeding. Wonderful I thought why is it these people always give you this information when you have 15 minutes left.

However it was a good days fishing and it didn't rain.

I've been lucky enough to have been picked to fish at Monk Lakes for this quailifer on 13th May 2009.

With the likes of Darren Cox and Bob Wotton also in this quailifer and also another 128 entries

Wise old men well not really.........!

Well this is what happened at the pub last friday night, a couple of the locals have taken up trout fishing and watching them add a loop to the end of the fly line.

House lake - Wylands 5th Feb

I'm off back to Wylands House lake this weekend, for another practice session, not sure wether Ade(wingnut) will be joining me this time.

This time I'm going to try a few different methods:- waggler and also pole at 6 meters. using 4mm pellets

I'm aiming for around 20-30Lb bag for the day, which I think should be about right in this weather.

Well when I woke up saturday morning it had snowed over night, so I knew this was going to be hard fishing today.

I dropped the otherhalf to work, then remmebered I left me pole rollers at home so a quick trip back home to pick them up. I decided to go via Wishing Tree lake a local club water , when I drove past it wasn't frozen so I knew neither would be the house lake.

When I arrived at Wylands, I was amazed at the amount of people that was fishing, there was already 5 or 6 fishing the house lake. I knew where I wanted to fish so I could judge my performance over the last practice session with Ade(wingnut). I unloaded the gear and parked the car upand started to setup. I lake was still as there was little wind. I opted for the pole and set it up to fish at 6 meters. At this depth the lake seems flat at about 5 feet deep. Having already spoken to Trevor (M.T Net) the week earlier I had a good idea of how I should be fishing.

Bait wise I had 4 pints of red maggots, a tin of sweetcorn, some small red worms, and mixed up around 3lb of groundbait.

I treated the session as a match with a planned 15 minute break to get some food.

I fed 6 balls of groundbait at the off , followed with 2 pouches of red maggots, then shipped out with double red maggot on the hook.

Within seconds the float went under and small roach of about 6oz was swung to hand, it was back out again followed with pouch full of maggots again, soon the float disappered again, this time it was a rudd around 10oz mark. I continued to feed at every put in of the pole. With every 10-15 put ins I introduced a small ball of groundbait.

Once I built up enough food the swim I started to catch skimmer bream every cast, these ranged from 6oz to 1.5lb's .

At the break I changed onto a lighter elastic and used the same rig, then out again I had a couple more skimmers on the new tip, I started to feed a few grains of corn every few minutes. I tried sweetcorn on the hook as this normally brings the bigger fish, however this isn't the case I couldn't get a bite at all, however back to double red maggot the flaot disapeared within seconds.

I decided to give up around 3.15pm having used just over 3.5 pints of maggots and all the groundbait.

I would estimate I had a good 40-50lb of fish throughout the day.

The only thing I would say is that last time I fished with the method feeder for part of the session towards the island and did have bigger bream to 3.5lb's