For the past few three weeks I have been concentrating on a rather large gravel pit, its 160 acres to be precise.  The lake has vast stretches of unfishable water, boats are not allowed, well not by anglers anyway.  It is a challenging water that no one really knows the potential of.  I have fished the lake on and off for 30 years and would love to think that a monster might be hiding, iv nothing at all to believe it to be so, just a desire.  I think that must be what keeps me going back every now and then.  Iv actually decided to give the lake my attention this winter and have started to get some areas baited up with the intention of keeping these areas topped up with a mixture of Sonu S pellets,  hemp n corn and a mix of different boilies.

With 160 acres to go at it is very difficult to locate fish in any numbers, you do get the odd show, the carp in this lake just don’t show themselves.  I’ve tried staying up late at night and listening out for them and I’ve got up 30 minutes before dawn to try and catch them out but all to no avail.  At a mile long and nearly half a mile wide it’s no surprise.

So I have decided to concentrate on just two areas until I see or hear of something to make me change my mind, to give you some idea of scale these swims are 1 mile apart.

One area is in a secluded bay of around 15 acres that offers depth averaging 8ft but with an area that comes up to 3ft.  This bay is sheltered from the ravages of the winter storms so I am hoping that this might be a spot that offers the carp somewhere they want to be what with the shallower area for when a bit of sun is on the water.

The other area where I fished Friday night is right on a boat lane.  This lake has yachts on it as well as the local private school’s boat club.  The areas that the boats run up and down are only 3 to 4ft deep and kept clear of weed as well as offering a freshly turned over bottom from all the activity above.  I am hoping that again this could be an inviting part of the lake for the carp.   The past three weekends I have drawn a blank although one of my pals on the lake did manage a mint 30lb common.  You see, these fish just don’t get caught or fished for for that matter. Friday night there were just three of us on the lake!

So that’s my plan for the next 6 months anyway.  I will on occasion have a dabble on Chilham just to remind me of what a carp looks like.

I just did the Friday night for carp this week as on Sunday I had one of the few matches that I like to attend, the Kent championships.  I gave up serious match fishing several years ago but do like to keep in touch with my old match angling mates and keep my hand in where possible.   This year the match was to be held on the River Rother between Wittersham and Newbridge.  With 100 anglers on the bank it was one of the bigger matches on the calendar. The Rother is a land locked canalised river around 30m wide, it is almost still with little or no flow.  I decided on one line of attack, in my more organised match angling days I would have had a rig or method for every eventuality.  On this occasion though I decided on a groundbait laced with chopped worm and caster to try and attract the skimmers and hopefully bream.  I cupped in six balls at the start and fished 1ft overdepth in 9ft of water with a piece of worm on the hook.

During the course of the match I managed 15 or so skimmers and a few perch for a weight of 9lb 10oz.  This was enough for the section. It was only after packing up and making a few calls to mates on other sections that I found out how poorly the river had fished, a combination of clear water and bright sun doing the damage.  The down stream end and next to end pegs had 11lb and 12lb meaning my 9lb 10oz was good enough for third place on the day.  I was very pleased with that to say the least, especially as I am a little rusty with the pole handling and size 20 hooks these days.