Willinghurst Fishery - Roachfest

This weekend I decided to enjoy the sun and spend a day fishing at Willinghurst Fishery in Surrey. As I've recently bought a Preston 13ft Excel Float rod I wanted to try catching silvers on light tackle. I chose this fishery as they allow a keepnet to be used for a small additional charge ( it cost me £15.50 for one rod and a net), and I wanted to see how many fish I could catch in the 5 hours or so that I was there.

After stopping off at Surbiton Angling Centre to pick up a pint of red maggots (and some other bits and pieces - why can't I go into a tackle shop and come out with only what I went there for?!?), I arrived at the fishery at around 11am.

For those of you who haven't been there before; I couldn't find a postcode online, but if you put in B2128 at Shamley Green into the SatNav, the entrance is on the left (if you're coming from the A3) after you pass through Shamley Green.

From the reviews I read online and from the limited bait stock in the cabin (no 'live' bait but some tubs of pellets, boilies and paste), this fishery is heavily fished with pellets. I chose maggots as I wanted to target smaller fish rather than carp, and I wanted to try something that may not necessarily be used often on the lakes. With my target fish in mind I headed for Top Lake and chose an open swim (No. 4) on the South East corner of the main section of the lake. I didn't have far to walk as there is limited parking right next to the lake, which was appreciated. There were already a number of carp anglers present with various pods beeping away around me - quite a few anglers had rods on two or three swims which limited my choices but nevermind.

The lake itself isn't particularly pretty, but it has some fish holding features if you get there early enough before the carpers take up all the swims! It was a sunny day and the lack of trees behind me gave me a nice red neck from the strong sun! In the margins there's plenty of reeds which wobbled every now and then with fish swimming about.

I chose to fish a small waggler in the margin to my left, about two or three feet out from the bank (my keep net was to my right). The float was an insert waggler (1.5AA) - after plumbing the depth I found it was around 4 feet, but there was an area of roughly two feet in diameter that was a few inches deeper. I chose to fish right on the bottom in this spot. I used a 4lb mainline, with a 2lb hooklength of about 8 inches. Most shot was under the float with small shot down the line so that the bait sunk slowly through the water.

I chose to use size 18 Drennan Barbless Red Maggot hooks, to this I attached 2 maggots, top and tailed to prevent spinning. After plumbing the depth I had thrown in a couple of handfuls of twenty to thirty maggots, while I was adding shot to my end tackle I had left it to settle for five to ten minutes. So by the time I cast the first baited hook in I was hoping that the fish were ready to feed. I wasn't disappointed as my float immediately started wobbing about and I swung in a tiny, hungry roach that snatched my hook out of the water as it fell to the bottom. On every cast I threw out six to ten more maggots if I had time before a roach snaffled the bait. This continued for an hour or so - on pretty much every cast I caught tiny roach, with the odd 2-3oz fish.

During the second hour I increased the amount of loose feed to try to feed off the small roach, but I continued to catch tiny fish after tiny fish. So after a couple of hours I changed tactics and removed the shot from around the hook and placed all weight about 6 inches from the hook. I had hoped that this would let the bait drop all the way to the bottom, past the small silvers nabbing the bait to the larger fish at the bottom. I started to catch a few more larger roach, although nothing bigger than a few ounces. I was still catching on the drop though, these fish must have been hungry! I guess they don't see a lot of maggots as the carpers stick to boilies and pellets. I even managed to catch fish with a sucked out maggot too...then I tried a plastic fake maggot and caught on that!

After a while it felt like I was shooting fish in a barrel (figuratively speaking!), a couple of times I had an issue with line on my reel and let the bait hang in the water at my feet and still I managed to hook a little roach! The carpers around me were catching plenty of fish too, except for one guy who didn't seem to catch a thing.

Eventually the inevitable happened and I hooked into something bigger, my line shot off and a few seconds later the 2lb hooklength snapped. I had also set up my feeder rod with a method feeder and rather than attach a new hooklength for some more roach I decided to give that a go. I cast out towards the centre of the lake with a hookable pellet on the hook, and some method mix in the feeder. After 5 minutes I cast out again in a bid to get some bait out, and 10 minutes later my quiver tip shot round. The fish gave a good fight and a few minutes later a common carp of around 5 to 6lb came to my net. I cast out again and waited another 10 minutes for a similar fish to make an appearance.

On the fisheries website it mentioned that 100lb bags are possible on the Top lake, if I caught carp of this size and at this rate I'm sure I could get close to this weight. I think on my next visit I'll stick with the method feeder. Unfortunately my hook length snapped while playing a particularly enthusiastic fish, but while waiting for bites on the feeder I had fixed another 2lb hooklength to my float rod so I decided to go back to that - afterall I had come here to target the small fish. As soon as I cast into the same spot in the margins I was catching small roach, skimmers and a couple of tiny mirror carp on each chuck. I had kept feeding in a few maggots now and then while on the method feeder, but given the hungry nature of these roach I'm not sure I needed to!

It's the first time I've used the Drennan Red Maggot hooks, they're coloured red to mask the hook from the fish. I use forceps to unhook fish, and after a while the red colouring had rubbed off. I don't think it made a difference to the roach in this lake, but it's a nice idea. Perhaps if you use plastic disgorgers it wouldn't happen.

In the end I had caught about 15lb of silvers, and 3 carp at about 5lb each from 12pm through to 6pm. In conclusion, I'd recommend Willinghurst Fishery, the fish are hungry and it's not a challenge to catch. If you've got a son (or daughter for that matter!) who's new to fishing, he could catch a lot of small fish on a whip while you target the bigger fish. I'll be back in a few weeks to focus on the method feeder, so I'll see how I get on then.

Tight Lines.

Graham.