Bean Lake, Newdigate, Surrey

As with most venues, finding the fish is your first task, Bean Lake isn’t massive and here are not many features that break your eye-line across the lake so spotting them isnt difficult if they are showing themselves.

Once you’ve located the fish, feeding a mix of small pellets and broken boillies over your hook bait is a proven method on the Bean Lake.

With fish meal boillies often working the best.

Simple pop up rigs work the best.

As the majority of the lake is silty, a pop up around an inch off the bottom is subtle enough for the fish not to spook but also allows for a great presentation.

I caught all my fish on a simple pop up rig with a 15mm pop up, size 8 barbless hook with a stiff coated braid hook link.

However, the fish can often be found cruising and many people have caught them on simple free lined bread dropped on. their path.

It is important not to chase the fish as they spook extremely easy.

The carp will often circle your bait a few times before taking it, so don’t lose faith if the fish move off the spot, as they will likely come back in.

The best swim really depends on two factors, the time of year and where the fish are.

There is a no fishing area on the south side of the lake where the fish are fed and so you’d expect them to seek solitude down there.

In the summer months, the fish can be found in the bays on the north bank, east bank and in the weed on the West Bank.

The swims in the bay with the two small islands always holds fish in the warm weather. The water here is about 2/3ft deep.

The swims on both sides of the lake are fairly overgrown, however, use this to your advantage, as you can use the reeds as cover to hide from the fish as they are extremely spooky.

Similarly, the bay on the north bank. If the fish are in there, set a rod off the pads – put in a handful of bait and sit back and wait for the fish to move back in.

In the winter, the swims along the north bank control the deeper water in the lake, which ranges from 8 – 13ft. In the winter the fish hold up in the deeper water.

Heavy baiting does not work well on this venue. I would class bean lake as a stalking venue more than anything.

The fish are fed pellets from a drip feeder in the no-fishing area, which is filled once a week (on a Monday). For this reason the fish do not respond to large quantities of bait.

Baiting little amounts to where the fish are can work. But for minimal disturbance and the lowest suspicion from the fish, fishing single baits to showing fish is the most effective.

I have also had no luck on Zig Rigs. I have seen fish spooking off zigs multiple times. Not to mention, with the level of weed, if you were lucky enough to hook a fish on a zig, the chances of landing one in the weed would be slim.

Fruity baits do not work so well.

With there being large quantities of weed in the lake, the fish are more attracted to fish meal baits as this is more natural to the fish in bean.

Personally, all of the fish I have caught out of bean lake have been on fish meal baits.