Society Chairman Austin Battell has had a great three sessions on Barden Lake. Fishing with a feeder rod and not feeding heavy, the first session produced a Bream of 13lb 2oz and a lovely Carp of 45lb. The second session produced two Bream of 8lb 2oz and 12lb 8oz and the third session produced one good bite which resulted in a stunning 9lb Tench. All fish were caught using 10lb mainline with 8lb hooklink and size 10 hook.

With the warmer weather now upon us, Barden Lake has been fishing very well for all species. Carp to over 40lb being caught with several 30lb+ fish and lots of twenties also showing. Lots of nice Tench being caught to specimen size and some Bream to double figures.

The Old Ballast Pit has been fishing well from the field bank and off of the new platforms. Carp to 30lb+, Tench to 8lb+, Bream to nearly 10lb and good Roach and Rudd to around 12oz being reported.

Society bailiff Gaz Saunders and friend James who is a new member had a great weekend session on the Old Ballast Pit recently. Following a very cold night, the fishing started slow but picked up as the weekend went on, resulting in ten Carp, two of which were over 20lb, 6 Tench and a few Bream.

The 2023/24 match season came to an end recently and was dominated by one of our long standing members, Colin Fowler, who has fished brilliantly all season and recorded some great weights and some lovely individual fish. Colin may well have broken the match record for overall weight and has won several other trophies over the season. Steve Parker also had a great season, recording what would normally have been a Championship winning weight. In third place was Lee Wakeman who nearly broke the ton mark with 99lb 5oz.

Some other match catches during the season

There have been some great captures of decent Pike on our stillwaters over the winter months. Barden Lake always throws up a few twenty pound plus fish, but it was also good to see Haysden Lake produce some decent fish for a change. Tony Cooper had several fish between 18lb and 24lb and Neal Rogers managed to tempt the same fish Tony caught a few weeks later. Junior member Alex Stokes also done well fishing with dad Gareth on the river, catching an impressive couple of Pike of 15lb 8oz and a Cup winning 16lb 5oz fish.
 

After last season’s successful Pike match, we decided to introduce a Pike League. Sixteen regular Pike anglers entered and although the fishing was tough, there were still a few nice fish caught, including this stunning 19lb 10oz specimen which gave Melissa Fordham the overall league win and the pleasure of holding our new ‘Limited Edition’ David Hughes sculptured bronze resin Pike trophy. Medway Tackle sponsored the event and donated a lovely Cup for the biggest fish along with some vouchers.

For many years the Old Ballast Pit has been choked with lilies during the summer months. We have tried various different options up to now with very little impact, so the Society decided to have then professionally sprayed last September. Hopefully this summer will be much clearer from the lilies but we won’t know how effective it has been until they start showing.

During the season we continue with our monthly get together’s on the first Saturday of each month. There has been some great work done by our regular attendees, with platforms being built and repaired, a bridge being re-seated and swim clearing and other general maintenance.

The Society recently invested £25,000 into some fantastic new aeration equipment and a state of the art remote monitoring system. This is a real game changer for us, especially with the problems we have encountered over the last couple of summers. We now have sufficient aeration equipment for the Old Ballast Pit and Barden Lake which can be deployed as soon as our remote monitoring system alarm signals that there is a dangerous drop in the disolved oxygen level on either of the two lakes.
We would thoroughly recommend this system to any club, syndicate or other fishery  as this system takes a reading every 15 minutes and can be viewed on a mobile phone at any time. This enables us to respond to any potential issues quickly without having to manually check the water at silly hours of the day or going out in a boat to do so.