Happy New Year from us all at Cherry Lakes.

We are now through Christmas, and with just a couple of days to go, I would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very Happy New Year. We hope it is a healthy, successful year for you and your loved ones, and that you catch some good Carp along the way.

Our good friend Andy Watts spends some time with us every December. In recent years, the pre-Christmas week has been a tough one with little caught. This year it was completely different for Andy.

The biggest change was in the weather. December was amazingly mild. Very unusually the water temperature increased from 5C on the 1st December (we had several consecutive nights of frost at the end of November) to 9C by 19th December. Not surprisingly the Carp responded to this rise in temperature, and so did we. We had to gently feed all of the lakes as the Carp were so active.

We also undertook our normal stock top up of Cherry Lake in early November, following the drain down and emptying of the stock pond. The new stock tends to be the most active, and will get caught even when the other more established Carp are 'shut down'. Given the warm conditions, the new stock seemed to encourage the existing Carp to compete with them and they also fed quite hard. An impact which is normally experienced in the Spring.

Whilst he had the advantage of no-one else on Cherry Lake, Andy largely limited himself to largely fishing in Heron's and one area in the Cottage's water. At first the most productive area was about 20 meters off The Cottage swim fishing just off the plateau. An area where a lot of Carp seemed to be holding up. Most of his Carp however came from the middle of Heron's water approx along the line of where we had been feeding. I am not sure if this feeding activity helped Andy, but it certainly did not seem to hinder him!

Andy principally caught on the Cherry Lake Banoffee and Caramel Cream boilies and wafters. Initially he used broken boilies and a little pellet in his PVA bags, before moving on to wafters fished amongst boilies. Typically he would spread around 10 boilies in a 6-9ft circle with several near to his hook bait. Enough food to get them interested but not enough to over feed.

Most of his Carp came between 10.00 to 16.00, with only a couple coming during the hours of darkness. Very sociable if you ask me, as well as more enjoyable!

In total Andy caught some 21 Carp during the course of this exceptional week. He managed 2 Carp of 39lb+, the 39-00 Mirror pictured in the lead photo above, and the Carp we know as Pac-man at 39-04. Apologies my night photography did not do this special Carp justice!

His other two 30's were real beauties. He had a lovely mint conditioned Common of 35-04 (pictured two above) and a very colourful Ghost Mirror of 33-08. Most Carp change colours during the colder months. Ghost Carp tend to get brighter and more 'golden/orange' as you can see from the photo above.

Andy also caught eight twenties and 9 good doubles. Of these 'doubles' 6 had already been chipped as they were removed from the stock pond and transferred into Cherry Lake. Three of these were not and were subsequently 'chipped' by yours truly. Reinforcing the point made earlier that new stock can encourage the existing Carp to feed more actively. One of these was this terrific 'home-grown' stunner of 19-08.

I am pleased to report that we have already seen the normal post Christmas Day pick up in the level of bookings. If you can, please use the on-line booking facility to get quotes, check availability or to book your 2026 trips to Cherry Lakes. As I am a one man band for bookings at the moment the more you can do to be clear on what you want to book, the more it helps me. If you can and do, thank you!

If you find this too difficult or if you have questions which are too complex for our simple process, then please drop me an email to info@cherrylakes.co.uk or call on 01285 869887 and I will do what I can to help.

See you in 2026.

Happy New Year to you all.