Catch a Cherry Lake Roach. Earn a £1

As many of you would have seen from Simon's Facebook posts, a lot of good Carp have been caught from all the lakes across the complex.

The biggest since my last post being a 39-02 Common to Liam Nugent, followed by a 37-08 to Connor Lucas. As far as I can tell we have had some 12 Carp over 30lb caught in the last two weeks. Most of these were repeat captures. Having said that there were three new entries and our running total of different Carp in my 2024 30+ catalogue for Cherry Lake now stands at 54 (including 8 different 40's). I have selected some of the best photos received to feature here.

The lead photo above is of Dave Hollands who caught this impressive heavily scaled Mirror of 33-04. From memory I think this was a PB for Dave, who returned to Cherry Lake to catch from Grebe Lodge

I particularly liked Nick Young's self taken photo of this two-toned fully scaled mirror of 30-12. I just wish all the photos sent to me were this good.

Another first time visitor also made their mark by catching a 30lb+ Carp. This time it was Shane Hanson who caught this impressive 33-02 Common from Osprey Lodge.

Finally I could not resits featuring Sam Marendaz's lovely Crucian of 2-08 from Cherry Springs. All featured below.

We do understand that one of the principal reasons why anglers visit Cherry Lake is that it offers the chance to catch some big well conditioned Carp. Indeed for many of our guests their PB's have come from Cherry Lake.

We have noticed that some of the Carp are lower in weight than we would expect for this time of the year. Some are even positively 'skinny'. We suspect there are a number of reasons for this and they all relate to the amount of available food for the Carp to eat.

We are partially at fault as we have probably not been feeding heavily enough on Monday's and Friday's. A point compounded by the observation that very few anglers bait heavily with boilies these days. Ironic given this tactic and approach can often be very productive at this time of the year.

We have recently mainly been feeding boilies, (much more expensive I might add than the previous practise of feeding primarily with good quality pellet) because their harder skin provides some resistance and longevity to the bait from the Roach. This has partially been successful but is patently not enough on its own.

Unfortunately, the Roach in Cherry Lake, which are now both very numerous and of a good average size (typically 4-8oz), are thriving on the pellets fed by both ourselves and anglers.

Our approach 'to work around the Roach' is not working as well as we want it to. We have been advised that we should not worry about feeding the Roach as long as the Carp are getting enough. As we cannot rely on anglers to more heavily feed, then we will have to increase our expenditure on feed and take the lead ourselves.,

Our intention over the next few months, when the Carp should feed heavily and bulk up for winter, is to increase the mix and quantity of feed during our normal Monday and Friday changeovers. It will be interesting to see how the Carp respond. We will also remove as many Roach as we can. See the initiative below!

As well as feeding more, we need to do what we can to reduce the Roach population. Given the presence of large numbers of bars , channels and gulley's netting is not likely to be very successful. Predation by Pike/Perch and even Cormorants have not been a barrier to the Roach so far. So we need to get as many out as we can.

Whilst we have always allowed and encouraged anglers to float fish on Cherry Lake, a keepnet for example is provided for each Lodge/Cottage to retain and remove any Roach caught, in truth our encouragement has been very low key.

We now need to get serious! For the rest of this year, we are really encouraging Cherry Lake guests to float fish to catch and retain Roach whilst waiting for their Carp rods to roar off. For each Roach removed by ourselves we are offering £1 credit towards your next booking which must take place before the end of 2025.

The only qualifying condition is that you must catch a minimum of 20 Roach (£20 credit). So if you catch and retain 50 Roach during your stay you will be awarded a £50 credit towards your next booking. If you catch 250 you get a credit of £250!

In addition, we will be offering additional credits for the top three anglers in terms of Roach caught. These anglers will receive additional credits of £300, £200 and £100 respectively.

So, if you are booked to visit Cherry Lake this year please don't forget your float tackle. You could have some fun, earn some valuable credit and perhaps most importantly really help us out.