David Taylor lands a 32lb Cherry Mere Mirror

I have just returned from a week's fishing trip to a lake south of Limoges in France. I travelled their with three good friends who I have met through them fishing at Cherry Lake> We went in search of big fish and getting 'our string pulled'. In truth things were tough, the lake and facilities were not quite in line with the 'blurb' on the website. We all struggled and shared just 6 Carp between us, with one of the party blanking. This is the reason why this update is a bit patchier and shorter on information than normal.

I did sometimes muse during my struggles last week that I could empathise even more closely with my recent guests, who have also been struggling and blanking on Cherry Lake. This Spring has been very poor for Carp fishing across most of the lakes I know about. It has been cold, dry with high pressure and a lot of overnight frosts. Indeed, and good grief, we even had a frost and minus 2C temperatures on Thursday night. The water temperature this afternoon was just 11C. The Carp certainly have not been feeding heavily and consistently as you would expect in the pre-spawning period. Indeed I think the Carp were behaving much more predictably, and were more catchable during the winter up to mid-March than then have been since. Fluctuating temperatures, up and down, always seems to adversely effect them.

The smaller exclusive lakes, Cherry Mere, Cherry Springs and Cherry Pool, have all been fishing well. The high stocking densities in these lakes, and the fact the Carp by definition cannot be too far away, always makes them easier and more reliable.

The star of this weekend was David Taylor who fished from Pochard Lodge on Cherry Mere with his good friend Justin Lomax. They shared a 15 Carp catch which included 9 twenties plus this 32lb Mirror above and in the lead photo. This Carp was caught last year at just over 30lb by regular Stuart Crafer and it is good to see that it continues to grow and do well.

Justin's biggest was this attractive heavily scaled Mirror of 26lb pictured below.

David sent me a lovely e mail from which I have lifted some quotes.

'We had a fantastic weekend on Cherry Mere, you and Judith have created a lovely venue. The fishing was great, with consistent action throughout the weekend'. 'We also had plenty of fun catching perch, small carp and some lovely crucians on the float rod. This was a big birthday weekend and it couldn't have turned out better with a great venue,  lodge and fishing result. Will be planning to visit again.' We are very glad you enjoyed yourselves and well done.

They actually caught around 30 small Carp on floats fished just a few feet off the fishing platform in 6-7 feet of water. These little babies have been transferred to our stock pond and will hopefully do well there. So any guests planning to visit Pochard Lodge please don't forget your float rod as catching these babies is a great fun way of spending some time between runs. It also helps us thin out the stock.

Somehow I forgot to mention that regular Oliver Wells caught a nice thirty from Cherry Lake during his last visit. This Mirror pictured below weighed in at 30-08, broadly similar to its weight (31lb) when caught by Edward Szczak last May. This Carp being the 22nd addition to this year's 30+ catalogue. Nice one Oliver.

We have had several cancellations for June, so I thought I would list the vacancies for the next couple of months, just in case you fancied a visit to Cherry Lakes but at the time could not make any dates work for you

13-16 May and 06-10 June. Egret Lodge on Cherry Pool

06-10 and 10-13 June. Heron Lodge on Chery Lake

20-24 June. Heron Lodge on Cherry Lake

27-01 July. Osprey and Grebe Lodge s on Cherry Lake.

Please call me on 01285 869887 or email info@cherrylakes.co.uk if you are interested in these dates.