Two 40's from Cherry Lake

I am pleased to focus on Cherry Lake in this update, in part because we had two 40's out last weekend.

The Carp are obviously feeding, as their weights are clearly recovering from their post-spawning lows. They are not however giving themselves up and guests are having to work hard to get a run or two. Not untypically at this time of the year, the Carp can play hard to get, but the rewards are there. That's certainly been the case for two of our guests over the last week.

The star of the show has been returning guest Phillip Kingsbury, who has been staying in Grebe Lodge. After listening to advice from ourselves, Phillip has been steadily winkling them out.

His first one was this 42-02 Common pictured immediately above. This particular beauty came from the shallows. I was pleased to find her in my 2024 catalogue being held by Richard Haddingham when he caught her in May at 41lb. A good sign that she has recovered from the spawning period and has been feeding well.

After catching a 27-08 Common, Richard then went even better by catching a fabulous brace of stunning heavily scaled Mirrors. The Carp in the lead photo above went 37lb on the scales, a similar weight to when caught by Carl Harris at the end of October last year. Again from my perspective this suggests this Carp is well placed to be bigger by the end of the autumn feeding spell.

The heavily scaled Mirror of 35lb immediately above is not one which I can find in my 30+ catalogue from the last three years. This, presumably rarely caught Carp, is a very welcome new addition to the ranks of 30+ Carp in Cherry Lake.

Indeed the running totals of different 30+ Carp from Cherry Lake in 2024 now totals 61, which includes 52 over 30lb+ and an additional 9 Carp over 40lb.

The fist of our weekend 40's was caught by another long term regular guest Mark Goodyear. He stayed in Osprey Lodge with his wife Michelle.

From memory Mark caught 4 Carp during his weekend with us including this 44-08 Mirror Carp pictured above. The big Mirror was a new PB for Mark and his second 40+ from Cherry Lake.

I have to say that when I saw this fish I thought it was huge and I had to go and get my scales to be sure Mark had the right weight. I am not sure that it's weight properly comes through in the photo, but take it from me it was a chunk! This Carp was over 4lb in weight than when caught earlier in the year. This weight gain might be due to retained/reabsorbed spawn or simply that she had been feeding hard.

A great result for both Phillip and Mark. Well done guys.