Well its coming up for 19:30 on Monday 2nd June and I am getting ready for a trip out tomorrow. It'll be my first one as a member of the Crawley Angling Society and so i am going to head over to New Pond which is at the end of the M23. At around 4 acres with 30 swims I am hoping for a nice quiet day. With Roach, Rudd, Tench, Perch, Mirror/Common/Crucian Carp, Bream and Gudgeon swimming around i am also hoping to have plenty to talk about when i come home!

I'll be heading for Jack Frost Tackle first to see if i can pick up any tips as well as some maggots and lord knows what else. I'll already be armed with a load of corn and probably some bread so hopefully i can mix it up enough to keep them interested. One problem i have to overcome is the rulebook stating "umbrellas only whilst night fishing" which at first glance i took to mean you cant use an umbrella during the day but on second thought it could well be that you can only use an umbrella in the evenings instead of bivvies and the like. I am hoping to get through to the secretary tonight to clarify that slightly odd point.

Well after a quick call to the mobile number given i got through to the Secretary's wife who was very nice and helpful in explaining exactly what the umbrella issue is all about. As i suspected you can use an umbrella during the day and in the evenings you can ONLY use an umbrella. apparently they had people night fishing there and staying for 4+ nights fully tented up who would then leave days worth of rubbish there.

With that cleared up I have the TomTom set to take me to Jack Frost and then onto the lake and I'll be going equipped with 6 cans of corn (4 pints) some bread and I'll also pick up 2 pints of maggots at the tackle store.

.....

Well i am home after another long day at the bankside. I left home at around 8:30, picked up my maggots and got to the water for about 10:00. after a few minutes utter confusion about how to unlock the gate i managed to get in and i was away. I parked up and then went to have a look around the lake to try and pick out a swim. What i wasn't expecting was such well maintained surroundings. There is a bark path around the lake which then leads to each peg which are also all bark and nice and large. The sizes vary but the peg i chose for the day was peg 24. The peg is probably 8ft square and directly to the left and right are overhanging trees. in front of them are lilly beds on the left and right with the section of water directly in front of the peg open water.

I picked the peg because i thought lily pads were bound to be home to some piscatorial life an i wasn't wrong. after plumbing up i set about getting some bait in, a mix of red maggot and corn. Unfortunately because of the overhanging trees an overhead cast was almost impossible, though i didn't reckon that until the second hook was buried 15ft up in a branch. once i worked out how best to get my bait out to the lily pads (about 20ft from the peg) i put a few casts in and decided that my chosen float was way too heavy for the job. The 4.5g loaded Puddle Chucker was i think hitting the bottom when it landed which i noted eventually and swapped to a much lighter and more sensitive 2AA+ drennan crystal insert.

Unfortunately the day turned out to teach me more lessons rather than give me some nice fish. If it was eating maggots it was 3 inches long and if it was eating corn it was 3ft long! Directly in front of my peg as well as off to the left were three large carp stirring up the silt. With a match rod, 6lb main line and 3lb8oz hooklength there was no chance that one of these would be landed, more so with the trees roots as perfect cover.

Needless to say over the coarse of the day (about 7 hours) i think i hooked into a fish of that size on at least 3 occasions, all ending in a break off. The rest of the days catch were all small roach and perch for the most part aside from two nicer sized Perch that both took a couple of red maggots each within the space of 2 casts and about 3 minutes!

The Corn for the most part was being completly ignored and aside from the two nice Perch the maggots would only tempt absolute tiddlers. Frankly it was getting annoying as i was putting 4 maggots on a size 14 hook and the silly buggers were still trying to wrap their mouths around them. In a bid to get past the smaller fish i put a small shot near the hook to help it sink but apparently the small fish lived on the bottom as well as the top.

Hopefully my next trip will be a bit more eventful!

Picture was taken on my phone