Ben Brain lands ‘Ruby’ at 46-03

I clearly should go away more often as Simon and Dave did a good job looking after the place. As I have said before Simon is a revelation to me in how he uses Facebook etc. I guess being 10 years younger makes a big difference! Anyway I am now back, and the frequency of ‘Latest News’ updates should return to normal. Particularly as the fishing is most definitely on the up.

This update is about Cherry Lake, I will cover the exclusive lakes in a separate update.

Simon Littmoden who was in charge of the fishery in my absence took advantage last week of an empty Heron Lodge to land, what was then our biggest Carp of the year, a 42-03 Ghost Mirror Carp. As you can see in the picture below he was very pleased! And so he should be, because after 30 years of UK Carp fishing this is his first English 40lb+ Carp.

The highlight of the weekend was Ben Brain’s fish from Grebe Lodge. Over the weekend the fishing on Cherry Lake was not easy with Chris Dudley being the only other angler to catch ( Chris had a 31lb Mirror and a 26lb Common from the Cottage swim).

Ben really worked at his fishing and was finally rewarded on Sunday afternoon when first a 22lber and then a lovely double zip linear of 27lb graced his net. A PVA bag fished close to the deeper car park margins, I believe, did the trick.

He completed his hat-trick of Carp early on Monday morning when he landed the big Mirror known as Ruby at 46-03. See the lead photo above. I think this is the top recorded weight for this fish. It was caught last year at 44lb. Not a bad result for Ben who was on his first visit to Cherry Lakes.

Well done to both Simon and Ben.

With the addition of the two 40lb+ Carp featured in this update, we have now had 6 different 40’s caught and recorded in my 2024 30+ catalogue. Of these two were new 40’s for us. My best guess is that we have another 10+ (maybe even up to 20 in total) different 40’s still to be caught this year. Judging by the 2lb+ weight gain of both of the Carp featured here, I would estimate that at least 5 of these 40’s will be 45lb+, and if caught before spawning one or two might be pushing over the 50lb barrier.

I have missed a number of 30’s which have been caught during our trip to the US where we were lucky enough to see the eclipse. I have however included this photo of the ever prolific Cameron Brannaghan with a 31-03 Ghost Mirror Carp. Not only is this a good looking and lovely shaped fish, this is one of our ‘home grown’ Carp ( probably 8-9 years old) coming through. Very satisfying from my perspective. Well done as always Cameron.