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Chilham Mill is situated about 8 miles from Canterbury in Kent and was dug in 1954 for gravel for the M2 that was being made nearby, by a company called Hookers, quite appropriate really. It was then purchased by Mid Kent Water in 1964 and used as a trial site for growing water plants. A few Catfish and Grass Carp were also introduced by the then Water Board later to become the N.R.A. and now the E.A. also as a trial, as the lake at that time was not fished, these fish have now achieved 42lb and 27lb respectively.

In 1991 Mid Kent Water brought Chris Logsdon to Chilham and ask him to develop the lake into a fishery. Most of the lake at that time was very heavily weeded and covered in reeds and after a lot of very hard work by Chris and a few faithful and very hard working friends, the lake was cleared of most of the weed, and after several nettings, the stock was assessed and undesirables were removed. Over the next few years Carp were stocked, as they became available and other lakes were opened under the Mid Kent Fisheries banner. It became apparent to the parent company that fisheries was a viable proposition so when Chris asked to borrow a large amount of money in 1998 in order to drain the lake and remove vast amounts of read encroachment they were happy to do so. Some 6acres of reeds and small islands were removed, new swims and paths made and 600 new trees planted. The lake was then filled and restocked with some 500 new carp (All English) bringing the stock up to in excess of 750 carp. The lake now covers 26 acres and has 34 swims, every one of which has a feature to fish to. It has everything that you could want in a lake, several islands, and lots of gravel bars, plateaus and marginal cover.

The stock is now estimated at between 750 to 900 carp including a conservative guess of 40 x 30’s and 500-600 x 20’s. There are a few singles but these are rarely caught, the rest being around the 15-19lbs mark. MKF have stocked 20 of these 30’s in the past 4-5 years and the lake record now stands at 38-0. The stock levels given here are the opinion of Chris, but personally I would put the number of 30’s a bit higher and I, like a lot of regulars that know the lake, believe that there is at least one 40. The big Common from Crown Netherall was stocked into here at 36+ some time ago and has not been caught for a while. Another possible 40? The lake record of 39-4 was caught by Ian ‘Chilly’ Chillcott during a recent fund raising event and looks like that could pass the 40lbs barrier quite soon.

My guest for this trip was Ian Russell of Heathrow Bait Services, a very accomplished and experienced carp angler, his UK personal best standing at 43-9 from a Berkshire syndicate water. Ian is a very busy and active angler that makes the most of his time and thoroughly enjoys his fishing. Ian, 42 is a partner in HBS and has been in the news steadily over the past few years with many big fish from a variety of waters to his name. He has been a regular qualifier in the BCAC eliminators and reached the finals several times fishing with his mate Phil Dasilva, the pair finishing fourth in last years final at Nickolls.

We arrived at Mainline/Chilham midweek to find the conditions far from ideal for this very prolific water. The wind had recently switched easterly, and although it was warm during the days with quite a bit of rain, the nights were turning very cold. I put Ian into a swim called ‘1-Pole’ which fishes out into the open water with an island to the right. This was the most productive swim during the winter months and a few fish had been caught from here recently. I chose the next peg along, one known as’ Transformer’ which has always been a good steady peg, with plenty of features in front of it and still able to get into the deeper, open water spots.

After briefing Ian about his swim, several cups of tea and pointing out the spots that normally produced fish, we set about tackling up and prebaiting. As the lake had been fishing quite well, Ian set his target for the 48-hour trip at 3-4 carp whilst I thought that 2 or 3 would be a result in these conditions, unless the wind turned away from being easterly. The unsettled weather was to continue according to the forecast with temperatures of 12-14 degrees during the days and down to 1 or 2 degrees for the nights and very clear, not ideal.

Ian started of by spodding about 5-6 pints of maggots and about 3-4kilos of hemp with a few bits of sweetcorn to a silt area at about 90 yards, a known catching area. Ian was going to fish one rod on this spot with a bunch of maggots, one rod just of it with a bottom bait and a third rod fished with just a small pva bag. We was allowed 4 rods each for this feature so Ian decided to fish another at range with a pop-up and again, a small bag of ground boilie and salmon fry crumb.

In front of my swim is an island at about 100 yards and a few fish had been caught from here previous to my arrival by a good friend of mine, Camo, so one rod had to go tight to this. Another was fished at the same distance but about 35 foot away to the right from the island, a slightly deeper area with some small gravel patches amongst the silt. The other two rods were fished slightly right to a gravel bar at about 70-75 yards, one just over it on the gravel and one about 5 yards past it in the silt.

I decided to keep feed down to a very minimum and fish for one take so relied on very small pva bags containing 2 or 3 crumbled Activ-Maple-8 boilies, with 10x14mm baits scattered around the area. The rod on the island was fished on its own with no free offerings at all. I knew that fish had been there up to my arrival so didn’t want to spook them after the change in the weather and hoped to nick one almost straight away.

Both of us had kept the rigs quite simple to start with, Ian using a bunch of about 20 maggots on one rod, pop-up about an inch with a piece of rig foam, an 18mm bottom bait on one and 2 with small pop-ups. All four were tackled up with 25lb Stealth Skin and Ian only uses 2 patterns of hooks for nearly all of his fishing; Korda’s Longshank X’s and Gardener’s Incisors. All four rods also had a 22lb Gardener Subterfuge, fluorocarbon leader as Ian does not use tubing and leadcore is banned on this venue. Ian has complete faith in this as its sinks extremely well and is very robust.

Ian’s other tackle consisted of a Greys X-Flite 12ft 3.5lbs TC rods paired with the new Daiwa Tournament reels, loaded with 15lb GT80. Spod rod was the Greys one with which Ian uses 8lb GT80 and a Korda 30lb XT leader. The marker rod was also the Greys one and on this Ian uses 30lb Suffix braid, again with the Korda ‘Xtra Tough’ leader in 30lbs breaking strain.

I was using my favourite 12ft6" 3.25lbs TC Fox ETHOS rods and Daiwa 5000T’s, a partnership that allows me to fish anything from under the rod top to well over 100 yards. The island rod was using 15lbs Daiwa Sensor line with a short length of Korda rig tubing, a 3.5oz Korda distance lead on one of their lead clips. This was finished of with a 6 inch hooklength of 25lbs Stealth Skin tied to a size 10 Korda Longshank X hook, blow back style with a small ring on the shank.

The other three rods were all using 12lbs Sensor and 3 or 3.5oz distance leads, on clips and with hooklengths between 6 and 9 inches. Two of them were set up for pop-ups with Fox series 5 hooks in a size 6 and the other for a 14mm bottom bait on a Fox series 6, size 7 with the Stealth Skin’s sheathing left on.

The rods were put out to their spots and we settled back with plenty of tea and some of Sue’s cake. Can life get any better? The evening and night passed with very little action in the way of carp but Ian was busy all night with everything other than carp. He banked bream up to about 11lbs, an eel of about 5lbs and a catfish of just over 31lbs. The spot that had been fed with the maggot, hemp and corn was showing plenty of signs of fish; bream, tench, everything but still no carp. I had 2 very suspicious indications where the swinger lifted slightly with 3 bleeps and then dropped again once the line had tightened to the clip.

The day was spent mainly watching Ian catching Pike on his marker rod with live baits caught in the landing net in the edge. They were going absolutely mad with strikes on the fry every couple of minutes. Steve & Chris of Korda fame were down practising for their BCAC match and even they had to have a go. I think Ian banked something like 8 pike in a couple of hours including one of just under 20lbs. This feature was looking more and more like it was going into pike & predators or some other specimen magazine somewhere. It was not making good reading for a carp mag but Ian was happy and enjoying every minute of it.

Shortly before dark fell, Ian topped up the maggot area with another 15 spods of the same maggot, hemp, and corn mix and continued to fish the others with just pva bags. Ian had also experienced the dodgy takes so he changed 2 of the rods to small pop-ups fished on a longer hair and critically balanced in the hope of getting the bait and the hook right into the mouth of any carp inspecting it. The bunch of maggots had now been replaced by a snowman set up with a 18mm bottom bait and a 14mm Nut mix pop-up, again in the hope of making it easier for the bait to be taken. The other 2 rods being a 12mm nut mix and a 12mm Pineapple. It was hoped that the pop-ups would get a better take than a bottom bait, as the fish seemed very reluctant to do much to get the bait and may have been just mouthing it slightly.

The only change that I made was to swap the Fox butt swingers for a quiver type indicator so that I could leave plenty of slack for any takes before the line tightened up to the clip. These were set with quite a long drop of about 6 inches and it was hoped that this would make the difference and get one on the bank during the coming night.

I hadn’t changed anything on the island rod as I saw no point but did put out 20x18mm Activ-Maple-8 baits with the stick, dotted all around the tree line of the island. I had seen a couple of carp showing here and felt that I should have had a take by now so I hoped that the freebies would get one of them to make a mistake. Two of the rods were still on the Pineapple Hi-Visual pop-ups that have proved themselves so many times on here in the past, both of them with a small pva bag of 3 crumbled 14mm baits. The last rod was still on a 14mm bottom bait that was soaked in Mainline’s feed inducing Fosoil, again just trying to increase the attraction to the hookbait without using too much, if any feed.

I did decide to spod out a little bit of feed tight to the back of the bar at 70 yards to my right, and for this I used about 1.5kilo of crumbled Activ-Maple-8 baits, mixed with a couple of handfuls of hemp, a small tin of sweetcorn, a handful of grilled hemp and all mixed with about 100 ml of Mainline’s Ultra Marine Oil. Fish had been caught during the past couple of weeks over a small bit of bait and I was hoping that this would pull in a couple of fish that may be looking for food after their winter slumber. The mix was spodded out over quite a large area around the rods being fished there, as I still didn’t feel confident that the fish were that strongly on bait yet. I’d much rather that they found small, isolated clumps when they are like this rather than one bigger grouping of bait.

We settled once again after I had warmed up one of Sue’s home made Bolognese and more coconut cake followed, along with plenty more tea and chatting about all and everything. The night sky cleared and another cold, still night was on the cards. Ian continued to catch the odd bream, he added a tench to the specimen list as well but at least we had now seen a couple of carp showing by the baits. It was looking up and life was good.

I was awaken at about 3 o’clock in the morning with a single bleep on the rod just over the bar and by the time that I had my boots on and got to the pod, it had slowly started to tighten to the clip. That was enough for me this time and the first carp was hooked. After a couple of minutes of steady pressure, a 19-14 Common graced the mat and first blood was mine. The fish had fallen for the 12mm pineapple pop-up, fished blowback style on a Fox series 5, size 6. It does look a bit big compared to the bait size but believe me, the fish find it almost impossible to eject and the hook will turn around what ever side it’s approached from.

The fish was sacked until light and with renewed confidence; we set about the kettle again and sat chatting about rigs, baits and all things carpy. Ian received a slow, steady pull at 10.30 and he was in at last. When things are not to be, there’s just nothing you can do to change it and after about 20 seconds, the hook pulled out and the fish was gone. Ian, although disappointed, knew the score and placed a new bait and a bag, back out to the same spot.

Not long after this, my rod fished passed the bar then signalled 2 bleeps and exactly the same as before, the line tightened as far as it could without pulling from the clip and carp number 2 was hooked. This felt a better fish and after a manic scrap under the rod tip, a 27-14 Common was in the net and another one for the pineapples.

The day passed without much happening other than Ian losing another one at the net. A much better fish this time and another hook pull. We were both convinced that the carp were not going mad on the baits and were very cagey and unsure. Both of mine were hooked in the middle of the bottom lip, like they had tried to blow the bait out but the hook caught without them knowing too much about it and instead of bolting, they sat there trying to get rid of the hook.

Looking back, and asking Ian what he would have changed, his maggot and particle approach did get a response a lot quicker than my feeding approach did and he was happy with this. He knows that the maggots are bound to draw in the tench and bream and alike but with one of the takes coming over this baited area, he knew that it had worked as well as it could have done in the circumstances. Maybe if he came again, he would start of with the slightly smaller hookbaits on all rods and just keep to the small pva bags for attraction to the hookbait.

All in all, a great trip to this very prolific venue that is fast getting a name for itself in the carp world and a good example of 2 different approaches that both have their place in a carp angler’s armoury. Mainline/Chilham is a cracking water and is available to people by joining Mid Kent Fisheries, a tier 2 ticket that covers more fishing than you will ever need costing under £200! For more details about the venue or to enquire about membership, call Mid Kent Fisheries on: 01227-730668 during office hours.