The water is too wet !

A difficult week across the fishery which superficially is a little strange given low pressure, plenty of cloud and wind etc. All of the lakes have been much slower than they have been with just 6 Carp landed and a few lost on Cherry Lake. The slow fishing conditions is because the water has been too wet!

Please let me try to explain.......... Cherry Lake along with all the other lakes, has risen by around 6 inches over the last week. Now whilst we have had a lot of rain, we have not had that much. The real driving force of the lake level is of course the ground water level. Given the local sedimentary rocks (essentially gravel and sand over a thick layer of blue clay), when the River Churn level rises the water table rises. The River Churn rises in the Cotswold's and drains a large area. As it flows down into our area shortly before it joins the River Thames, it re-charges the local ground water levels. Given all the rain you can imagine the river has got a much greater flow in it and this has driven the lake levels up very quickly.

The trouble is this rain and river water is colder than the lake water. The impact of such a big volume of cold water has been to quickly drop the temperature of the lake some 4-5C. The Carp have gone off the feed almost in the same way as after the first hard frosts of the autumn when the water gets a 'cold shock'. The good news is that the lake water temperature is back on the rise again, and it was back to 17.6C when I took it earlier today .

I think it has been particularly tough on some of the female Carp which have yet to spawn. They must be thoroughly miserable as well as sulking in quiet corners out of the way. The weather forecast is for much warmer weather next week. I hope it is warm enough, for long enough, to enable the Carp to spawn when the water temperature is stable around 20C+. We will see!

Regular guests Kevin and Janet Lane have been staying in Kingfisher Lodge on Cherry Springs this week. Kevin has managed to grind out on average 2 Carp a day, which is less prolific that we would normally expect at this time of the year. He has however had a lovely 21-08 Mirror Carp which is pictured above.

As it has been a little slow, Kevin has been float fishing close to the right hand side trees. As well as having a 10lb Mirror which gave him a good run around, he has landed several Roach to 1-08. Personally I am delighted to see the occasional Roach being caught and clearly doing well.

I have stocked Cherry Springs with about 100 each of Tench, Roach and Crucian Carp.Largely to give our guests something else to fish for other than Carp and the ubiquitous Perch. The Tench are now starting to pick up small Carp baits and coming out around 2.5-3lb. The Roach and Crucian's are rarely seen. I suspect both of these species are doing well, but do not regularly inhabit the area near the fishing platform of Kingfisher Lodge, and as such they are not fished for. Crucian's in particular are well known for finding small areas out of the way of the 'bullying' Carp.

With all the excitement of Mike Houghton's amazing catch of 3 x 30's plus the new 40-04 Mirror (see last news update), I forgot to mention Stephen Martin's capture of his second 30 of his visit last Thursday. . The 30-03 Mirror pictured in the main photo and immediately above was the 21st different 30 landed from Cherry Lake this year. This particular Carp was last landed by Andrew Johns last August at 31-05. Quite possibly this Carp might have spawned before the weather broke for the recent rain? Sorry Stephen for the delay and well done!