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The Park's Angling Grapevine
The weather during the main summer
months has been for the most part beautiful with long hot days and mild nights,
what I would call a proper English summer. Although it was lovely these
conditions brought a few problems, especially for those anglers wanting to
target the carp that love to sunbathe just as much as we do. On nearly all the
Park lakes the carp spent most of their days cruising round the surface
completely ignoring anglers bait. It didn’t last though and during early August
the weather took a nose dive with much cooler temperatures and a fair bit of
rain. August bank holiday weekend once again brought lovely conditions before
once again conditions turned more Autumnal for the end of the month.
Swan Lake had been in quite good
form for some anglers and poor for others.
Jacob Harris with a good Swan Lake mirror
There were some reasonable fish caught,
but a few anglers were having a bit of a hard time of it particularly with the
bigger fish.
Michelle Harris with a beautiful Swan lake perch
Brian Haynes who was targeting the tench had some great results
with fish to 7lb 12oz, he also found some very big perch in real numbers and
had very few below 2lb but up to 3lb 10oz! One notable very big carp at this
time was John Hamilton’s ‘27’.
John Hamilton's big Swan Lake '20'
One interesting thing on Swan Lake
is that several anglers have reported catching small catfish. I’ve not seen any
photos yet but they insist they are the species!
The Residents Lake fished quite
well for all species. There were some big carp caught with Paul Hickson taking
fish to over 20lb on boilie. Pete Bray had numerous doubles and a couple of
20’s using plastic baits (to counter the crayfish) close in to the near margin!
Just two of Pete Bray's many Residents Lake carp taken this summer
There were also a lot of nice bream taken, in fact for a few anglers they
started to become a bit of a nuisance especially during the hours of darkness.
Kingfisher Lake continued its consistent
form with lots of fish being taken. Top match angler Neil Kilsby had a cracking
session early in June taking good roach, bream and carp on pole tactics.
Match angler Neil Kilsby leans into a good Kingfisher fish
Neil with a lovely Kingfisher lake bream
John
Hayes continued to plunder to mixed stock on match gear but also picking up the
odd very big carp to just over 20lb.
Fountain View 1 continued to
produce plenty of fish especially carp well into double figures. I had a few pleasant
day’s fishing taking some nice carp to just over 15lb fishing close into the
margins!
Fountain View 2 had been in top
form especially for young visiting Irish angler Mark who during his stay caught
numerous carp to just over 20lbs on both floater gear and also on bottom baits.
Young Irish angler Mark with a superb FV2 '20'
I was rather pleased to have helped Mark ‘tweak’ his end rigs resulting in numerous lovely carp.
Top carp angler Jake Glynn also had some lovely fish including
several 20’s.
Just a couple of Jake Glynn's superb FV2 carp
Willow View/Banks was in good form
with lots of carp being taken to all methods. Richard Mason took lots of nice
carp into double figures but he did manage a ‘20’.
Just two of Richard Mason's many Willow View carp
A Willow View '20'
Richard’s grandson Mathew
also had some super fish both carp and bream using both feeder and pole
tactics. During July, my wife and I had a very productive session. I took 5
carp to 15lb 4oz on floater gear using chum mixers as feed and a cut down
pop-up boilie on the hook and Claire had 3 good carp and a couple of lovely tench on
method feeder tactics to 15lb 10oz!
'Rossi' was impressed with Claire's beautiful Willow Banks mirror carp
I was pleased with this floater caught Willow Banks '15'
Heronsfield Lake had been a little
inconsistent particularly as the weed growth had got extensive. Early on Fred
Jackson had some very nice catches of tench to over 6lb on both feeder and
float tactics. He also had some very nice roach, rudd and perch on light float
tackle.
One of Fred Jackson's many Heronsfield tench
There were one or two nice carp taken especially by young master Jordan
and his dad Steve.
Together with the title picture - these are just a couple of master Jordan and his dad Steve's Heronsfield carp
Chrissy and Mark Jones had taken some nice carp to over
20lb, tench and one or two very big bream.
These images are just some of the carp to over 20lb, tench and bream taken from Heronsfield by Chrissy and Mark Jones
Another angler that caught some lovely carp, tench and bream from Heronsfield was Nick Bowden.
Nick Bowden with a super Heronsfield mirror carp
I did hear a report of an angler
catching a 30lb pike but this was unconfirmed!
Canada Lake was in very consistent
form with lots of small to medium sized carp showing. The lake has been
receiving a lot of pressure due to its consistency and the poor form of several
other lakes on the complex. A lot of carp were lost especially by those anglers
that insisted on using completely inadequate tackle. What it is about these
fish, I don’t know, whether it’s the water quality or the natural food in the
lake but as I’ve said before the carp in this lakennn are turbo charged, pound for
pound they are the hardest fighting carp I’ve ever come across. You really do
need to use heavy feeder or pole gear with at least 8lb mainline. A few of the
top match anglers found fishing heavy pole tactics particularly with paste and
pellet gave great catches of carp including some vey good doubles. Gary Harris
and Tim Jolley both had fish to over 15lb on the pole!
Gary Harris with a beautiful 'pole' caught Canada Lake 'double'
Tim Jolley with a cracking 15lb Canada lake mirror taken on the pole
Gary Harris with another big Canada Lake mirror taken on the pole using pellet and paste
The new small pool next to Canada
lake now officially called Moorhen Pool has fished well for its good stock of
small carp with anglers catching on all methods. One really interesting point
considering how young this pool is being that several anglers have been
catching very small 2 -3” carp that must have bred in this pool or more likely
Canada Lake that is joined by a balance pipe.
How good it is to see this perfectly formed mirror carp that has bred naturally on the park
The back lakes or as you might know
them Mallard, Grebe, Lilly and Teal fished very inconsistently. The matches had
been hard going at times. If you were on the fish especially in Mallard Lake
then some nice fish especially the carp and bream were taken. Pleasure fishing
was better although inconsistent. It appeared you could catch one or two nice
fish but could not keep them in the area feeding. In the very warm sunny
conditions the carp particularly played hard to get with them spending the
daylight hours sun bathing and being totally uninterested in angler’s baits.
During these hot dry conditions
Grebe Lake suffered a very bad algal bloom that may have been the potentially
toxic blue green algae, so as a precaution the lake was closed for nearly a
month. On re-opening Fred Jackson fishing peg 6 had a nice afternoons fishing
tacking 6 good carp on the pole.
The River Gt Ouse was in good form not
so much for big fish, but for numbers of fish. A lot of small chub up to 2lb on
floating crust were taken and there were some nice catches of roach and dace
taken on stick float and trotting tactics.
‘Gary’s
Fishing’
My own fishing this summer was OK.
I had plenty of fish, but nothing really to write home about. I had a couple of
good early sessions on Heronsfield taking some nice tench and a couple of small
carp on feeder tactics using maggots. Later, because of the hot weather I
decided to target the carp on the surface and this proved to be very
frustrating at times. I fished Mallard Lake all day one Friday in July. I could get them feeding on dog biscuits, I tried everything from free-lined
floating crust to hair rigged pop-up boilie whittled down to look like a
‘mixer’, but they refused to take it. I did manage to take 2 small ones off the
top later in the month the best being about 7lb mirror that took a mixer shaped
brown pop-up glued to the shank of a size 10 hook. As I mentioned above I did
have some lovely carp fishing surface baits on Willow Banks to just over 15lb.
During August, I had a very
successful overnight session with a friend Mike Martin fishing Canada Lake. We
had originally intended to fish Grebe Lake, but with it being in dour form I
suggested we try Canada Lake as there have been lots of carp being caught
including some good fish well into double figures. We chose to fish pegs 1 and
2 so we could have a bit of a social as well and as usual put the world to
rights. Although most of the carp in the lake are small as carp go we spombed
in plenty of bait and used big carp rigs and boilies, although because the
crayfish in the lake were causing me real problems I ended up using a tiger
nut/plastic corn ‘snowman’ combo. The night was quiet for me only taking two
carp early on but Mike had 4 nice commons through the night. On the Saturday morning,
the fishing really took off with me taking a further 7 carp to around 8lb.
Interesting I couldn’t get a bite fishing away from the island initially, but
Mike had most of his fish out in open water on 16mm pop-ups on a ‘Ronnie Rig’ To
cut a long story short by the time we packed up late on Saturday afternoon we
had taken 19 carp between us, nothing massive, but good sport none the less.
Tight lines - Gary