Hartleylands Farm – Pear Tree lake – 13th October

Despite the forecast of a dry day, we arrived at Pear Tree lake around 8am just as it started to rain. We took up pegs 3 – 6, as there were some nice reeds against the edge, which should produce some nice fish later in the day.

Having realised I had forgotten the groundbait, it got even worse as I was setting up, no landing nets !!!

I set Ryan up on the feeder with some groundbait I had left in the bag, and he started to fish to the edge of the island from peg 6. Mark said he would keep an eye on Ryan while I went back for the nets & groundbait. Just as I was leaving, Sam had a couple of roach, and Ryan caught his first carp.

Back after about an hour with the nets/groundbait, it was raining quite hard, and Ryan had caught a few more carp between 1 – 2lb. I set a couple of pole rigs up, and we started to fish out at about 15ft with 4mm Ringer expanders. We both were catching roach, skimmer and small carp, as the heavens decided to open with hailstones, we took shelter under the brolly until it died down.

Sam was getting a bit bored, and said he wasn’t feeling well, so Mark arranged for Mary to come and pick him up. Ryan had dried out a bit now, and was back fishing, catching some better sized carp, as the sun came out for a while.

We were all catching fairly well, when Nigel & Connor arrived at about 1 o’clock. We helped them set up, and within a couple of casts with maggots, they were both catching small roach ( and Connor the odd tree ). It was a mix of showers & sunshine, but this didn’t slow the fishing down.

Ryan and I were taking turns fishing close in on my swim, which I had been feeding all day, and could now see the reeds moving around as the carp started to feed. We were now catching nearly every cast, using luncheon meat, and the carp were averaging 3-5lb’s.

I set Nigel up with some luncheon meat on the hook, and fed a lot of bait close in for him. Straight away he hooked in to a carp of about 2lb’s. Ryan was helping Connor, who was now fishing my swim, and he started to catch some nice carp. He picked up using the pole very quickly, and had one fish of about 5lb.

Mark had been catching carp steadily all afternoon, and decided to head home around 4pm. After catching about 70 fish between them, Nigel & Connor headed home, and hopefully had a good day.

I started to pack up the gear, as Ryan carried on catching, including his best fish of the day, a nice 6lb carp. Apart from forgetting the gear, and the miserable weather, it was a good day. Hope we can all meet up again with better conditions soon.