Ruddy netful

I am not a fan of commercial fisheries and whilst this venue may have the slight look of one, once you scratch beneath the surface it is very different. This is Hailes fruit farm, there are two ponds which were obviously originally for the farm's water supply. They are not advertised at all, not even from the roadside so they are peaceful, undisturbed and overgrown. They do hold Carp but only a small stock of naturals, no F1s, stockies or pasties. The majority of the stock is silvers(and gold!) and they range in size from small to average and slightly above. So this was were I spent my weekly outing.
I have fished Hailes twice before using only maggots and I caught a lot of fish. The problem I had was trying to get to the better specimens. The maggots were eaten by everything especially the small Roach so this time I fancied trying pellets to see if that would sort out the bigger fish-it worked.

Other brands are available

Also having read about some bloggers recent successes with Perch on prawn I had a second rod primed for a margin attack.
First cast with a pellet and I landed a Rudd and a pretty decent one at that weighing about 12oz. Within a few minutes I had his sister in the net also and this set the tone for most of the day. It was very nearly a bite a chuck and watching the waggler sail away is one of my favourite things in fishing.
I also quickly landed three small Perch from the margin rod on Prawn but those bites dried up as soon as the sun came out.
The only thing that slowed me down with the pellets was a change of wind direction around lunchtime. All the crap that was gathered in the right hand corner blew across in front of me to the left hand corner. It meant the float being dragged about or the pellet not sinking but I was having such a good time I did not let it bother me.

I finished with a bagful of Rudd, Perch and the odd Roach and not a mangled mouth between them.

My ambition for the session was to beat my previous personal best Rudd, which stood at 1lb exactly. I managed to do that by a meagre two ounces. Not the target annihilation like last week but pleasing none the less.

Seems like Spring has finally arrived.