Tom Etchells amazing brace of 'new' thirties

Fishing has picked up slowly since my last update. The water levels have stabilised and the absence of frosts have ensured water temperatures have been constant. The best result over the weekend was by Paul Sparks who fished from Kingfisher Lodge on Cherry Springs. He caught a very impressive 16 Carp, including three twenties to 26lb+. Sorry no photos. His tactic was to pick three spots around the lake margins and to keep consistently baiting and fishing the same spots. He caught from all three positions throughout both day and night.

I am very pleased to report that the Carp on Cherry Lake are again picking some baits up. Unfortunately we have had several Carp lost as well as two lovely Carp which has been caught by Tom Etchells. I am particulary pleased with Tom's brace of 30's because amazingly enough neither of them are present in our catalogue of Carp over 30lb in 2019.

Tom who is already a member of the Cherry lake 30+ club has been staying with his wife Nakita and baby son Tommy. I just love the lead photo above of Tom and Tommy and a 32-04 Mirror.

Tom's first thirty was a lovely Mirror of 30-04, pictured above, and was caught around 9pm. I was pleased to get the call as it was the first Carp out for a while. Given it is such a distinctive carp, it is one which I instantly recognised. I felt sure it had been out beforethis year and was surprised when I could not find it in my catalogue of 2019 30lb+ Carp. Indeed the last photo that I can find of this lovely fish, dates from July 2018 when she was caught by Vince Rolfe at 28-12. I presume from this that this fish is not really growing and may also have been caught since this date? However she is a very attractive and welcome addition to our 30lb+ 'stock'.

Tom's second thirty was the 32-04 Mirror pictured above, came at 08.30 when it picked up a bit of corn. This Carp also turned out to be another new 30lb+ Carp for us. . Given how many other 30's there are in the lake I wonder what the odds are on catching two new ones?

Tom's successful tactic for both of his thirties was a fish over a handful of broken boilies, pellets and hemp with a small cut down boilie. Top angling Tom. We look forward to your return

I had hoped we would get to the 40 x 30's mark for Cherry Lake for this year, and at a running year to date total of 43 we have clearly smashed our 2019 'target'. Given we still have several known 30's still to make the 2019 record, plus any big 20's coming through, it feels like that through the autumn to spring period that we must have 50+ 30's present within Cherry Lake. Maybe this will be our target for 2020!