Lucas Partridge celebrates his 16th birthday in style!

Apologies for the long radio silence since my last latest news update. Judith and I have been celebrating our 40th anniversary (in Iceland!) and I then sneaked off for a week long fishing trip. Fortunately Simon has kept the Facebook posts going, so if you follow us through both mediums you are broadly up to date.

Rather than moaning about water levels and inconsistent fishing, it is so nice to be able to start one of my updates with a positive story.

Dad Spencer and son Lucas Partridge stayed the weekend in Cherry Lake Cottage as a birthday treat to Lucas, who turned 16 whilst he was here. Evidently Lucas really wanted to visit Cherry Lake and hoped to beat his PB.

I will confess to have been very worried about their chances of success, as Cherry Lake had completely switched off between Monday and Friday. The sharp drop in temperature of the water seemed to 'knock the fish for six', with the Carp apparently 'shutting up shop'.

With the weather change over the weekend, plus a few days to acclimatise, the Carp finally came back on the feed on Saturday afternoon. Long story short the Partridge's did not start fishing in the Cottage swim until Saturday afternoon. When they did, the first rod in the water quickly roared off, with Spencer landing this lovely Ghost Common of 31-08 in the lead photo above. His own small hook bait fished over Cherry Red doing a 'quick' trick!

Lucas had to wait for his 'birthday present' until Sunday evening. After a good fight Lucas landed the biggest Carp of the weekend, this chunky Mirror of 34-04, smashing his previous PB. See the photo above.

I am of course pleased that it has started to rain at last! We have has some good downpours, but given how dry the hills are and the normal high levels of evaporation at this time of the year, very little of this rainfall is currently making it into the River Churn and correspondingly we have not yet seen a meaningful change in the lake levels. Still we have made a start!

The Fenton family, Mum Ruth, brothers Jack and Will make an annual 'pilgrimage' from Northern Ireland and always seem to do well. Their recent visit to Cherry Lakes was no exception.

Between them they landed over 40 Carp of which 10 were over 20lb, topped by a new PB for Jack. This 37-08 Mirror above.

As can sometimes be the case, and especially on the more prolific exclusive lakes, double takes can result in two fish on the bank at the same time, creating the opportunity for a 'group' shot.

I think this is a great shot of the two brothers together with William (left and 24-06) and jack (right 23-10) posing with a couple of nice twenties.