Cherry Lake netting was a real success for the Carp

As well as undertaking the audit of Cherry Springs last week, we also spent several days netting Cherry Lake. Cold and hard work, but rewarding.

By way of background, we drained Cherry Lake in 2012 to clean up the silt as well as construct a range of sub-surface features to make the lake more interesting for anglers (in the past it was very flat, featureless other than the tree lined margins, and chocked with weed during the summer months). These features included silt traps, the biggest of which are the shallows which sit largely in Grebe's water.

We also created a lake which should be virtually impossible to net for Carp. A reassuring by-product of draining the lake was the creation of large number of gulleys, channels, bars, plateaus and reed beds. This means it is just about impossible to run a leaded net over the lake without leaving gaps under the net for the Carp to bolt under.

When we created the lake, one of the things I worried was Carp being netted and stolen whilst we were closed for the winter months. In those dates I thought it would be preferable to close for the winter, I quickly realised that when you employ good people you can't let them go for the winter months and expect them to return next year! As such the perceived risk of Carp being stolen became much less of a worry, when we decided to stay open throughout the year. Other than the Christmas/New Year break we are now open to guests throughout the year.

We undertook a test netting last winter and managed to 'catch' around 60 Carp, in what was fairly normal weather and water conditions (water temperature around 7c). This was higher than I anticipated and gave me the confidence to book the AJS Fisheries netting team for a couple of days this time. .

Conditions for netting last week could not have been more different to last year. For the 4 days leading up to the audit, I had all the aerators going full time just to stop the lake from freezing.. Fortunately by the time netting started, we managed to keep about 50% of the lake free of ice. As I explained in my last update, this was sufficient for Ben and Sam to skillfully move the ice around, and on occasion net under the ice.

The water this year was super-chilled. The temperature being recorded two feet down on our dissolved oxygen probes was just 2C. This has the effect of making the Carp much more docile and slower moving than would normally be the case. In other words much easier to catch in our nets. This proved very much to be the case for the Carp, but not for the Roach. Similar to Cherry Springs the Roach had made themselves scarce as the result of a lot of Cormorant activity. They were certainly not shoaled up as they were last year.

During the last few weeks I had occasionally heard some water movement and splashing under the Lodge fishing platforms. I originally thought this was due to bird activity. I now know it to be that thousands of small silver fish (Perch and Roach) were under there seeking escape from the Cormorants (and our nets!). I suspect a lot of them were also sheltering in the reed bed.

Regular followers of this Latest News blog know that we begun a programme of chipping all of our Carp under 30lb in weight at the end of October. Whilst I have been convinced that chipping will not damage any of the chipped Carp, I did not want to put our biggest Carp (and oldest?) at any risk however small. Hence we are not chipping our Carp which are larger than 30lb. In due course, the twenties which we will have chipped will become chipped thirties and forties. Before our netting endeavours, we had a running total of 49 chipped Carp. This total is now over 130.

Interestingly, of these 49 pre-chipped Carp, we scanned some 25 of them on the bank, essentially 50%. If we extrapolate this out to the unchipped population, then we get close to the 300 target number of Carp in Cherry Lake we have been managing to.

Regular readers also know that my catalogue of 30+ Carp has fallen by the wayside during 2025, and that our records of our stock under 30lb was even poorer. So as well as chipping we took the opportunity to weigh and photograph each side every Carp caught in our nets. This proved to be a much bigger and more tiring undertaking than originally envisaged. Why....? Because we caught so many Carp!

During the course of one and half days of netting, we caught 150 Carp. Of these 8 were over 40lb+, 36 were over 30lb, and 106 Carp under 30lb were chipped. My thanks again go to the AFS Fisheries team for an excellent job netting and to Simon Littmoden for his very skilful chipping of so many Carp. It was impressive to watch all of these guys at work!

I suspect we were more effective at catching the bigger Carp than the smaller ones, although all sizes appeared in the nets. My feeling is that we were at least 4 x 40's and c.25 x 30's, that were not caught by our nets, and possibly more. One thing that is for sure is that our 2026 30+ catalogue starts the year with photos of 44 Carp over 30lb, which have been properly weighed and witnessed.

We will now have 'chipping pushes' at times throughout the year to increase the number and proportion of chipped Carp. We will be asking guest anglers to scan every Cherry Lake Carp that they catch (to record their number and weight), and where the Carp under 30lb has not been chipped, to let us know and retain them for Simon or I to do so.

I could go on and on about how great the Carp looked, but I will leave that to the photos here. The lead photo is a fantastic Linear Mirror of 37-11. What a Carp to catch.

The Black/Gold Common Carp pictured above is rarely caught and has been with us since 2012. It is a relatively slow going male fish, which I suspect has a bit of 'Koi' in him. I was tempted to display the photo of our 45-10 Ghost Mirror, which can be seen in the holding net above, but felt this special fish deserved it's own publicity!

I will return to these netting results in future updates. HNY.