I'd taken a trip to Bitterwell Lake a week or so ago and had a great time catching loadsa carp. It looked perfect for an evening session.

From the car park, I could see around 7 anglers dotted around the lake. My target swim had gone, so it was a case of having a look round for where the fish were showing. As I walked down the road side of the lake, swirls and tails where showing the in the far corner by the outflow... perfect.

I'd travelled lightly (I reckon next time I can go even lighter) so setting up took seconds. Some chum mixers went out into the swim, some premixed pellets and liquidized bread went into the margins. Looking good for a bite!

It took all of 10 minutes fishing before I'd hooked into my 1st fish off the surface!

The margin swim I'd chosen (the far reeds) wasn't producing so I switched to the near margin and swapped out the Peparami hookbait for a soaked chum mixer on the method feeder. Fairly instant results - a run within minutes!

And the action stayed constant all evening ;)

The night wrapped up with a double hook up, the feeder rod flying off while I was fighting a carp on the floater rod. Brilliant evening and a perfect way to spend a couple of hours on a Wednesday night.

If you haven't visited Bitterwell Lake lake yet, it's well worth a visit, you won't be disappointed. It's a really well maintained fishery which has had loads of work done on it recently (with more to come by the looks of it), one of the best in the area I'd say.

Love a new venue, always presents a challenge: you have think about how to approach it, find out how it's fishing, ring the changes with baits, read the water... loadsa fun!

For some reason, I woke up at 3am! Not the best start... just couldn't get back to sleep (excited?!) and ended up dozing till around 6ish. Loaded up the car, got on the road and managed to get the fishery at 6.40am - beating the manager by 15 minutes!

The early start really paid off though as I managed to have a good chat with Terry (the manager) about the lake and get a bit of advice on swims. My original plan was to head to a swim near a tree on the far side of the lake as it looked good for a bite: rushes to the right, bit of sun/shade from the tree, good bit of open water but not a overstretch cast for a feeder out to one of the aerators. But the advice was to try one of the double swims near an inflow (very good advice as it turned out...)

I decided to start the day with my fave set up: a sleeper ledger rod with fake corn, pva stick and a light feed of liquidized bread, pellets and corn and a 2nd rod fished with a feeder filled with groundbait and a maggot ball on the hair. The ledger went out into open water, only 6 or so meters from the right margin and the feeder went infront of the inflow.

It soon became apparent I was fishing all wrong!

The 1st run came to the ledger - it screamed off, grabbed the rod and... nothing...

The 2nd run came to the feeder - again, it screamed off, grabbed the rod and... nothing...

This happened a further 5 times! Bloody annoying! I'd been fishing for all of and hour or so and had managed to successfully miss 7 runs - wtf?!

So a bit of a rethink. Got the rods out of the water, got the breakfast porridge on and spent 20 mins or so munching, watching the water and generally calming down a bit. Something was up: the conditions were great, the swim was great, the fish were there, the bait was working... but something was failing. Which left tackle - perhaps I was fishing too heavy? One of the other fishermen (the chap who was actually fishing in my original swim choice) wandered by and mentioned he was using a smaller hook as the fish were pretty shy...

So I spent 10 minutes tying up some new rigs: a hair rigged bait band on a 10cm braided hook length with a size 12 hook, the idea being to mount either pellets, luncheon meat or sweet corn on the band. I also stepped the rod down, switching out the heavy 2-1/2 test curve carp rod for a much lighter 11ft feeder rod and put a korum method feeder on rather than the original cage feeder. The other rod went out with a similar size rig but this time using coated braid and a trimmed down Cell boilie.

The results were instant... and pretty explosive! The feeder rod had been out for around 5 minutes with two bits of real sweetcorn on the band when it literally jumped from the rod rests and proceeded to be dragged down the platform! Even with the clutch slackened off, the take was so violent that the fish attempted to take the rod with it! It took 5 minutes to get a 6lb common in on the light rod, loadsa fun!

I managed a couple more runs on the feeder (the ledger was silent) when the sun finally poked over the top of the trees behind me and shone on the water just out in front of me. This must've been around 11ish and all of a sudden, the fish started appearing on the surface... Luckily, I'd brought a tub of Pedigree Chum Mixers with me and fired out a couple of pouch fulls to see what would happen. Sure enough, they started to disappear ;)

It got so warm, I was able to shed the bib and braces and expose my lilly white legs to the world...

As the ledger really wasn't producing, I reeled in, got the float rod out and set it up with a really small surface controller running to 6lb mono and a fake chum mixer mounted on the hook. After a few missed takes and a chat to one of the chaps helping out the bailiff on the bank work, I switched to a real chum mixer on a bait banded size 14 hook - a crazy small hook for the fish that were showing, but they kept spitting the bigger ones out!

It took all of about 2 minutes and I was into my 1st fish. And they kept on coming. From 11am through to around 4.30pm it was all I could do NOT to catch fish ;) They we're literally boiling on the surface. I managed to get through nearly a whole bag of mixers, the greedy buggers! The only down point was loosing what I imagine was the biggest fish of the session to a hook pull after a great 10 minute fight... Could've used a bigger hook and a heavier rod for that one...

And after having ignored the feeder rod for a couple of hours (only recasting it every 20 mins or so) it suddenly came to life. I had 3 screaming runs in the last couple of hours of the session that resulted in some really decent fish.

It was difficult to pack up at 5ish, I can only imagine the surface and margin fishing would've really taken off (even more?!) in the early evening but what a brilliant session?! A perfect days weather, a whole loada fish ranging from 3 through to 10lb (there's bigger ones in there, spesh the-one-that-got away!) and I can't wait for a return trip.

If you haven't visited Bitterwell Lake lake yet, it's well worth a visit, you won't be disappointed. It's a really well maintained fishery which has had loads of work done on it recently (with more to come by the looks of it), one of the best in the area I'd say.

So to keep busy we thought we'd try a new water called Lower Kilcott Farm. I've read a lot about it online and done a virtual drive by on Google Street View and although it looks quite small, it seemed interesting enough. The general consensus in the forums was that it a bit of a muddy puddle full of fish (which for some people appears to be a bit of a problem...) and that if you couldn't catch, it was time to take up knitting...

We arrived pretty early at around 7.30ish and found that we had the place to ourselves - a good or bad sign?!. The weather looked good - sunny, bit of cloud cover and surprisingly warm for the time of year. As it's a small lake (an acre maybe?) we decided to take a side each: Dad took a corner swim on the road side of the lake which gave him access to a nice (maybe unfishable?) corner and some open water and I took up a nice edge on the far side with a bay and open water.

My plan was to have a sleeper rod out with a ledger baited with plastic corn and a float rod baited with maggots that I'd 'fish for a bite' with, a tactic I'd been reading up on in the fishing mags. The idea is to bait 3 areas, cast to the 1st and wait till you get a bite. Once you've got a bite (even if it doesn't result in a fish), trickle a bit more bait on that spot, move to the next and repeat the process. It should mean that any fish spooked on the 1st spot will be back in the swim by the time you return to it and with a bit of luck, you can rotate between the swims picking off fish as you go.

That plan kinda went to pot... The ledger rod had been in for about 10 minutes (less time that it took to get the float rod sorted) before the bobbin raised and the rod was off. A small 3lb common, very nice. The rod went back out, a little bit of bait went in, I tried to get back to plumbing the depth for the float rod and off the ledger went again!

And that pretty much set the scene for the day! I did manage to get the float rod out in the end and picked up some fantastic roach and carp, great fun on light tackle. The fishing was going so well, I swapped the float for a feeder filled with liquidized bread and went for a hair rigged maggot ball in an effort to bring in some bigger fish. It got to the point where the water was boiling and we were pretty much getting a fish a chuck - loadsa fun.

The weather throughout the day went from sun to rain on and off but the arvo was actually really warm. I'd seen some fish showing on the surface who'd been scooping up the hemp seed I'd been putting in as ground bait (guess some of it hadn't split or had dried out) so, silly as it seems, I gave floating crust a go...

... in January?! Really? It worked though! To be able to freeline crust in the sunshine, picking off 3-8lb carp was a bit of a treat after the previous one fish or complete blank sessions.

The action was so hectic, I only managed to take one snap for the day!

We've a return session booked in for this coming Saturday which I'm really looking forward to. The weather isn't going to be anywhere near as good (it's rain, rain and a bit more rain at the moment...) but I'm gonna take the opportunity to try out some new rigs and hone my float fishing skills (I missed a lot of bites last time). Then we're off to Harescombe Fisheries on Sunday which is another new venue for myself and Dad. From the sounds of it though, it should be nearly as prolific as Lower Kilcott Farm ;)