Old Bury Hill Fishery. The Estate Lake. August 15th, 2004.

NKHC in the punts at Old Bury Hill.

A most enjoyable day.

Today there's a group of lads from Maggotdrowning.com meeting up at Old Bury Hill fishery just outside Dorking for a social days fishing in the punts on the Old Estate Lake that had been organised by Beebs.

 I was drafted into HMS Pension Book to bring down the average age of the crew, and by the time we set sail it looked more like a naval review moored up in The Jungle so we settled for mooring just off of a reed bed (somewhere around peg 75 where the Island bank meets the edge of The Jungle, for those of you that are familiar with OBH.)

The weather was warm and there was plenty of cloud cover, but recent rain had added a fair bit of cold water to the lake, which didn’t bode well.
Anchored on our port side was HMS Taffy, and Geoff's 1st Perch soon elicited the familiar refrain of “It’s a fish, I haven’t blanked”.

Dave the Fish managed to winkle out a few Skimmers on his jelly pellets, Colin despite ringing the changes bait wise was getting nowhere fast and I resorted to fishing out into open water to snare a couple of better examples of the resident Bream.
The Highlight of the morning however had to be the sight of Jason aboard HMS Bag-up doing battle “Stand up & Fight” fashion with a cracking Carp, A super fish of 26lbs 8ozs at any time, but from a punt, it has to be something special.

With nothing really having it where we were, we upped sticks (in fact the mud weights) and moved across to the island, Dave and Colin fishing towards it and me fishing out into open water again. Colin hit into what was obviously a Carp, and despite doing the hard bit and keeping it out of the undergrowth surrounding the island was unlucky to have the hook pull once the fish was into open water.
I’d managed another couple of Bream when the swim was wrecked by  HMS Bag-up ploughing through bearing a mooning Beebs !! (No photo’s, this is a family blog)

This so traumatised our crew, that at this point we were forced to return to the boathouse for burgers and tea.

Nerves calmed and refreshed we returned to the Island. Sport was slow for myself and Dave, but Colin found a few Perch and silvers while I very briefly connected with a Carp for all of a couple of seconds till the hook pulled.
Almost straight after this Colin connected with another Carp on his double maggot set up and this time despite it putting up a spirited fight, it was in the net. Not up to Jason's standard at 8lbs, but very welcome none the less.

All this commotion having trashed the swim, it was time for one last move round the island, and having settled into a new spot my 1st cast resulted in a positive bite. A brief scrap and a nice Tench which when weighed went 4lbs 4ozs proved to be the final fish for HMS Pension book.

On the row back we passed HMS Taffy who had returned Geoff to port suffering from a bit to much sun.
A final cup of tea and a session feeding the tame Carp under the boathouse (Mr Wilson’s swim?) ended the day. Not the most prolific session, but still a good day out in good company which is what it was really all about.