14TH JUNE 2013

                         A DAYS FISHING AT KIA ORA PONDS  

                                RUN BY EXETER AND DISTRICT ANGLING CLUB



               

  Welcome back to my blog today for a change i was not on the grand western canal i was going to fish a exeter club water called kia ora pond which is in cullompton in devon it is run by exeter and district angling association you can get a day or season ticket which run from January to January you can get them from exeter angling centre or exe valley angling in tiverton at westexe. So we left home at around 5:15am and loaded my gear in the car and headed off to the pond it was not far from us about a 20 minute drive we arrived at the gate and parked up it was now 5:45am it was very over cast with spots of rain in the air but very light winds i unloaded my gear strapped in on the trolley and headed down toward the ponds it was a 15 minutes walk to the pond from the car park it was a long steep hill it was ok on the way down but was not looking forward to walking back up with all the gear .any way i got down to the ponds the first pond i came to was a silver fish pond but i was going to fish on the main pond which is the carp pond i left my gear on peg 1 and decided to have a walk around the main lake and have a good look as it was the first time i had been here  i was told pegs 4 and 5 were the hot 2 peg on the main carp pond after we had walked around the main lake we both decided to try down the other end of the pond i fished peg 30 on a corner swim with a inlet on my left hand side and Steve fished on peg 34 were he had a gap between 2 islands were he could fish the method feeder into open water i set my gear up and other bits and i was going to fish on one pole line with a carp power top right out in front of me right in line with the island at around 10 meters just 2 metres off  the island i plumbed up and found it was only about 1 and a half feet deep i cupped out 4 medium cups of damp pellet and some corn on this line i was fishing the paste the rig was a long bristle preston pb 1.00gr pole float on a 5lb guru mainline to a sise 12 Preston hook a size 12 which i find is a right size and the preston pr range is very good for the paste i had a number 8 to 12 orange hollow elastic fitted with a pulla bung and a Dacron connector i also set up an 11ft drennan puddle chucker series 7 feeder rod with a dawia x5 match feeder reel with a 5lb maver main line on this i was fishing a method feeder with a 5lb short method hook length tied to a size 14 hook.I started off on the pole at 10 meters i started on a bit of paste the size of a fifty pence piece.I shipped out and started fishing over the feed i had feed earlier it was about 15 minutes before i had my first bite on the paste it was a carp but after about 3 or 4 minutes of playing the fish it shot off around to my left and headed behind the island and snaped me off i went back out on the paste again after putting another size 12 hook on within about 5 minutes i was into another carp but this time after 3 minutes it was in the net it was a chunky carp of around 9lb or maybe a bit more i fished the pole for another 40 minutes and was not getting a bite or anything so i decided to change over to the feeder rod i had been feeding a few 6 and 8 mm pellets on and off since i got to my peg i packed the method feeder with fish meal ground bait and pellet with a 6 mm pellet on the hook and i cast it out to the tree on the island slightly to my right but again i had to wait about 45 minutes for my first bite on the feeder i kept chopping and changing from corn and hard pellet on the feeder fishing it on the same spot off the tree but by 1:30pm i only had 3 fish in the net it was very hard fishing today i was trying the pole in between but could not seem to get a bite or anything on the pole line i then changed back to the feeder and fished a 6mm sounbaits pink dumbell pellet shaped boilie and i decided to cast a bit further as we were the only 2 on the pond i cast to open water down in front of peg 28 were there was a lot of fish showing i caught 2 more fish both was on the pink pellet shaped boilie we packed up at around 3 pm i ended up with 5 carp biggest was 9lb and the smallest was 2lb steve ended up with 7 fish inc a ghost koi it was not the best days fishing but i still enjoyed it and i packed up happy with the gear packed up and loaded on the trolley it was now time to to do the thing i was not looking forward to and that was walking back up the steep sloap with my gear but i managed to get from the pond to the car at the top and it was not as bad as i was expecting and then we loaded the gear in the car and headed off home until my next blog if your out on the bank fishing tight lines

lee