FISHING AT PADBROOK PARK

24TH FEBRUARY 2014

 

Welcome back to another blog today for a change this blog is going to be on a pond instead of on the grand western canal with the weather a bit more quitter and the wind a lot lighter then it as been for about the last 3 months the long heavy rain we have had for the last 3 months are now very heavy short showers instead of long days of strong wind and heavy rain. So we are now near the end of February and spring is around the corner with the weather getting better I am hoping to get down on the rivers before the closed season in a couple of weeks.Anyway back to today's fishing I have spoke to Colin in the week and we decided we would meet up on Tuesday and head off to fish a new pond that we had never been to before but we been talking about trying for the last few weeks we were told that they only get about 40 anglers fish it every year as they don’t advertise there lake there just advertise there golf course and hotel the fishing is just a bit of extra cash if people turn up so with the pond not seeing many anglers we were hoping to have a good day it was a very old lake and there was a lot of the really old fish with a few new stock fish we had been told the record carp for the lake was up at around 24lb so it was looking good and we were both looking forward to it as it would be the first session away from the canal since before mid December last year and also the weather was looking better then it had been for the last 3 months and about time it did get better we Arranged to meet at 9 am Colin was going to pick me up down the road from were I live at the shop we were going to be travelling light with little gear just what we needed I took 2 rods a garbilno carp picker feeder rod and a dawia harrier 13ft match waggler rod a bag with my my reels in and some end tackle other bits and bobs and bait flask and food ect and landing net and carp unhooking mat which was folded inside my nash h gun folding carp chair we loaded the gear in to the car and headed of to the local tackle shop (exe vally angling) to get some bait. Which you would think would be nice and easy well you would be wrong there as we walked in the tackle shop with our bait tubs Andy that worked there smiled at us and said hope you don’t want maggots boy they all sold Saturday everone wanted them as there was a club match on one of the local club waters that did mess up out plans a bit as we were heading to a new water and when I have never fish a pond or fishery before I like to go with maggots the first time.

The nearest tackle shop was cullompton which was near were we were going fishing but then Andy in the shop informed us that Ian at Cully shuts on Monday which put a end to that plan but Andy had a look in the freezer out the back and managed to find us a pint of frozen maggots he had put back for his self so we had them and headed off we got in the car and looked at each other and at the same time we both said those maggots are s**t hahahaha J so off we went to find padborook we headed to cullompton via the main road through halberton and willand were we finally came to cullompton we knew we had to head through the main street and head toward the new housing estate we went through the new kingfisher estate were we then say the sign for padbrook park hotel and golf course we drove up toward the main entrance for the hotel were we parked in the car we walked around the main entrance of the car park as we had to get a day ticket to fish the lake but we had to find the main golf hut but we couldn't find it after having a good look around we headed back towards were we were parked we saw 2 chaps walking towards us so we asked them if they knew were the golf hut was they pointed us in the right direction we made our way up to the golf hut via a small foot path it was about a 5 minute walk up to the golf hut we went in to the golf hut we bought our tickets which cost us £5.00 each for a day from first light until dark which was very good we had a chat with the golf manager and he pointed us in the right direction to the fishing lake it was another 5 minute walk form the golf hut up to the fishing pond I think that when we fish this place again we will be bring a trolley anyway when we arrived at the pond we were shocked at how over grown it was the pond was very sangeg with a lot of fallen trees and branched in the water so we had a walk around the pond and saw a few carp on the surface they were only small carp of around 3 to 4 lb after having a look around and there only being 3 pegs on the whole pond were you can get in and fish on the right hand side this side was still very snaggy colin fished on the first swim which was a bit more open then any of the others I fished the second swim up past the hut with the water pumping gear in on the same side as colin I was right in front of the island there was a fallen tree on the left hand side of me with a fallen branch right in front of me off of the island I was only going to set the waggler rod up to start with I set up a long 3 bb self weighted waggler straight out in front of me about 3 foot off of the island to the left hand side of the branch in the water I put on a ssg to plumb the depth and cast out I didn't have any idea what the depth was going to be I cast out and the float was gone I reeled in and moved the float up about 3 ft and out it went again I moved it up another 2 ft as it was still to shallow and now it was right I was surprised at how deep it was It was about 8 foot deep.now with the rod set up I fed about 5 balls of bread crumb and 40 or 50 grains of sweet corn and left it while I went up and had a chat with my mate was still setting up but it was looking good as he had fish showing in front of him and a few fish on the surface.I went back and started fishing on sweetcorn it was about 30 minutes before I had my first bite I had a fish on for about 30 seconds before the hook pulled out and I lost the fish it felt a good size fish as well I landed one about 15 minutes later which was around 4lb I then went on to have 3 more carp on the sweetcorn before I changed to the maggots well dead maggots it was a good change as I went on to catch another 5 carp on the maggot and ended the session with 8 carp and colin had a few more and ended his session as well with 15 carp all caught in close in the open water we both did better on the dead maggot an when we feed them we noticed the fish go there heads down and were blowing all over the area we had fed so after a good days fishing we packed up and headed home with a total of 23 carp between us we had a weigh of over 100lb between us which I think was good for a pond we had never fished and was early march and not had much warm weather to get the fish feeding yet it is a place we will go back and fish again in the summer any way thanks for reading the blog and if your on the banks soon be safe and tight lines

 

lee