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Weather wise July 2015 was a very strange month, it started out really quite nice with a lovely warm spell, then mid month turned really unsettled with unseasonably cool temperatures and strong winds, then again turned nice towards the end. This certainly had an effect on the fishing, sometimes for the good and other times not so.
An interesting thing showed itself this month and that is where good form on certain lakes really showed and yet fishing on the lake next door was really hard work. An example of this was the form of Fountain View 2 where the carp fishing was as good as anyone can remember and yet only 25 metres away the carp fishing on Fountain View 1 was really quite hard!
Another interesting point was where for whatever reason certain species of fish suddenly all decide to feed and over a period of a few days the lucky anglers that were fishing at this time really did well. An example of this was on Heronsfield. Although the fishing, particularly for the tench has been really good for most of the spring/summer the carp fishing has been a little sporadic. During the middle of the month for reasons only known to the carp and I believe it was due to them having completely finished spawning as well as the cooler weather anglers all over the lake had some lovely catches of carp including some very big fish. One angler who has fished the lake for years and has only caught a couple of carp was lucky to be fishing during this purple period and took six good carp over a few days.
The Park Grapevine
Fishing on the Resident's Lake has been very sporadic to say the least with some of the regular carp anglers having a bit of a lean period. that's not to say that they weren't catching but not so many carp showed this month. Those anglers that were catching were those lucky enough to have features near to their plots. Fortunately depending on your point of view the general fishing was fine particularly the bream sport.
Kingfisher Lake continued to provide good sport particularly for those anglers who were not targeting specifically the carp. The bream were particularly obliging.
As I said above sport on Fountain View 1 has been patchy, yet on Fountain View 2 the carp sport has been really good with a lot of fish to over 20lb being taken on 'floater tactics'. Here are some of the lovely fish taken from Fountain View 2.
The carp fishing on Willow View/Banks has been pretty good all month with some very big fish being taken particularly after dark. Interestingly the period of good fishing I spoke about above on Heronsfield was also very good on Willow View/Banks.
Swan lake fished pretty hard during July. Some good carp together with its big tench and bream were taken but the fishing was quite hard and several big fish were lost due to the heavy weed. Also during the warm spell at the beginning of the month the lake suffered a big algae bloom. One angler that still caught some nice fish despite the conditions was Darren Stones who had carp to nearly 20lb.
Heronsfield was on good form for most of the month. As I've said above some lovely carp were taken, the best being a 27lb 6oz common that John Roberts took together with an 18lb making a smashing brace. Unfortunately John's pictures are not so good as his fish were taken during the early hours. Neil Carter had a 14lb-er and other anglers took multiple catches to mid doubles. The tench sport together with some good silver fish, especially the perch was really good. Neil Carter took a very unusual tench that was very dark, almost black including its usually red eye!
Canada Lake was also in pretty good form with lots of carp being taken on lots of different tactics including pole, feeder as well as 'big carp' boilies and buzzers. There was a rumour going around of a 25lb carp being taken but as usual no-one knows who took it and no pictures have been seen.
The fishing on Grebe, Mallard, Lilly and Teal Lakes has as usual been mixed. The matches have continued to be hard work on Mallard and Grebe but some nice pleasure catches have been made especially by those anglers fishing mid-week. Young Robert Swan visiting for a week caught some lovely carp from Mallard Lake on feeder tactics after I helped put him on the fish! Even I got in on the action with a pleasant few hours on Teal Lake taking some lovely tench along with a bag of roach and rudd using heavy pole tactics to cope with the weed. The only downside of my session was the huge number of crayfish I caught.
Sport on the two rivers has been really good which may be a little surprising considering the low water conditions. Lots of silver fish especially the dace have been taken along with one or two nice chub and one or two very big bream taken on the slower sections. Wayne Robinson took an enormous river bream. He did not weigh it but ive seen the pictures and it was very big. ("Come on Wayne get the pictures to me").
My own fishing this month has been fairly low key with no serious 'sessions'. I spent the first week of the month blasting around the wilds of Northumberland and Southern Scotland on my motorbike and have only had a couple of pleasure trips since. hopefully I will get a few more sessions in during August and get amoungst some good fish.