The Black Hydro Fishing Adventures: Barkham Ponds

This week I am fishing the Reading Fishing Club match at Barkham Ponds just outside Wokingham

We are fishing the 2 bigger ponds near the car park

I fish these lake quite a bit in the warmer months mainly for the paste fishing which can be fantastic with a fish a chuck the Carp run to just under 20lb with most in the 1-2lb stamp and 100lb+ pleasure catches are common

At the draw I managed to pull peg 2 on the first lake nearest the car park

not the best peg on the lake but it will do me

Plan of attack today is to fish 6mm soft hooker pellet over micro feed pellets at 8m straight in front

And corn over micro pellets tight to the bank under the tree to the left

And 6mm cubes of meat tight to the bank under the tree to the right of me

You need to get tight into the bank on these lakes as the Carp have under cut the banks and some of them go back 2 or 3 feet

10am arrives and at the all in I ship a pot of micro pellets out to 8m and another under the tree to my left with a few grains of corn and a few cubes of meat to my right

Then its out in front with a 6mm soft hooker already I can see a lot of fish over my feed and I'm getting line bites non stop

This lake is not very deep all I have is 2ft out in front and both the margin swims are about 3inches deeper at 27-28 inches

And it appears using micro pellets might not have been a good idea as now my swim is alive and fizzing like crazy. I was expecting it to be hard today so went with the micro pellets but the cold snap didn't arrive over night and its a very mild day and the fish are going for it

Still its too late now I didn't bring any 4mm sinkers so I'll have to stick with the micro pellets

Eventually my float buries and I lift into a nice 1lb common which gives my black hydro a nice stretch in the shallow water

I can hear a lot of splashing coming from behind the willow tree to my right so it sounds as though the guys pegged round there are catching and from the sound of it the bigger fish are feeding too

Phil pegged across in front of me next to the channel into the small pond seems to be struggling to catch and that peg usually wins most matches

And to my left I can see Stef is catching well too with fish the same sort of size as I am catching but he is catching at a faster rate

I decided to shallow up and try to bring the fish up in the water as the line bites on the deck were getting impossible to compete with this had the desired effect and I started to catch a few fish but they were around the 12oz - 1lb mark but I needed some bigger fish if I was going to catch Stef as he was now getting the odd 2 - 3lb fish and was pulling away

As Phil now had had a couple of real lumps from the channel and there was still regular splashing from behind the willow and news that Phil Lush had had 2 or 3 big fish getting on for 12 - 15lb each , I decided to give my margin swims a try and see if I could find some better fish

On the corn I had no interest at all and after 20 mins eventually managed a 12oz Carp on the meat swim so I gave up and went back to my 8m pellet line

By keeping a regular stream of micro's going in I was putting together quite a few fish now still only small Carp but regular and they all managed to get the hydro out of the pole

Behind me for some reason I had a dripping tap and due to the amount of coffee I was drinking and the dripping I was up and down to the trees like a yoyo

Sadly 3pm arrived and the all out sounded by that time I was really enjoying the fishing and could quite easily have stayed on fishing for a few more hours

News filtered through that the other pond had fished very hard and not much had been caught
Having been keeping an eye on Stef across to my left I knew That he had far more fish of a better size than mine

And Phil pegged the other side of the willow had caught a fair few big lumps so it was going to be between those two for 1st and 2nd but I had high hopes of making the frame and taking the coin for 3rd place

When the scales arrived at my peg I managed to weigh 39lb