Saturday 6 August 2016

Rhea Farm Night fishing for Carp 30/07/16

Been a long time since my last post and not much fishing being done.
But Robbie and my Daughter Caitlin have been pestering me to go Camping for months and when i saw a fishing Holiday advertised on a farm taht had lots of unusual animals it seemed perfect so booked a night and set off.
Rhea Farm is an eco friendly campsite near Axminster in Devon it's a lovely site with Large pot bellied pigs, Giant Tortoises, Ostriches.Emus, Goats, Chickens and Ducks plus some Rhea's
It has a 1 1/2 acre lake that used to be part of a quarry and doesn't seem to be an overly fished lake.
We arrived and were shown to a couple of swims where we could fish and set up including a lovely corner swim normally reserved just for the Owners.
WE set up campquickly and saw a lot of small fish topping and a few Carpcrashing unfortunately they were to the left of us andout of reach.
We set up some very standard carp gear as i'm not really a Carp fisherman but a bottom rig went out first with a cell boiled nailed to the bottom with some Putty and a Zig rig was sent out about a foot below the surface with a Milky Toffee pop up for bait.
I then set up a basic pole rig so my kids could catch a few of the smallroachand see if anything else turned up
We had been told there were Perch,eels,Roach,Rudd and Tench plus 1 large Catfish
The pole was very active with lots of small Roach and Rudd in fact too many the water would often turn black with shoaling fry and it was difficult to get any bait through the small fish with the biggest being only 2/3 oz's
Wedecided to Order in a Pizza and just as i hung up and was about to wind in the Carp rods the buzzer started to scream and a Carp was on.
Robbie was very quick to act and expertly played a lovely Carp of around 8/9lb was landed on the cell boilie bottom rig
We had to stop to collect our Pizza's and had a lovely walk around the farm visiting the animals
After the pizza which was OK but not great we tried the pole agin but the small roach made it hard so we gave up and built a lovely campfire then settled down for the night
Unfortunately the night was very quite we ahd a couple of small pick ups but no proper bites.
I rose early and saw some fizzing close to the bank so quickly got the pole ready and fed a new line a bit further from the bank.
It seemed the small Roach were asleep and my bait managed to get to the bottom and stay there within 10 minutes i had a slow drifting bite and struck into something slightly larger which turned out to be a 8oz eel.

I perservered while the kids slept in and started catching some slightly larger Rudd and Roach upto 5/6oz's and then a lovely Tench but again small at around 8oz's

We had some lovely fresh chicken & duck eggs fresh from the farm for Breakfast.

After breakfast i thought i would try a match style approach to the lake and set up a method feeder using some green Betaine pellets on the feeder and a 8mm Coarse pellet on the hook i cast out every 5 minutes for about 40 minutes and was rewarded with a nice Carp of around 6Lb.

Robbie and Caitie perservered with the pole and were both rewarded with eels and Tench but nothing over a 1lb

Unfortunately the small Roach reappeared and with no more Carp action we decided to call it a day.

Wehad a lovely night and really enjoyed the Farm but i feel it's a Farm with a Lake that can be fished rather than a Lake designed for fiahing with a farm and it would benefit from being nette dand some of the blip roach removed.

But a good time was had and we will return as my kids loved the animals.