We have two fishing lakes available for visitors at our holiday cottages, both stocked with rudd, roach, carp, tench and bream.
Carp are often secreted away and are famous because of their sporting prowess and agility.
Methods of Capture. The Carp is predominately a bottom feeder but can often be seen cruising below the surface of the water especially during the summer months, picking at fallen insects. When feeding like this, a carefully positioned bread crust or floating pellet can have the desired result.
The Roach is a member of the Carp family with relatively large scales firmly embedded in it's skin. It has a dark brown or grey back with a bluish or greenish lustre, silvery white sides and a white belly.
Methods of Capture. Float fished and legered baits will catch Roach. Steady loose feeding will tempt the shoal to feed and become confident. Popular baits are maggot, castors, small redworms and bread either punch or flake. Other baits that can be used are hempseed, tares, sweetcorn and bloodworm.
The Rudd at first glance looks very much like the Roach however the three main differences are it's dorsal fin is set further back, it's mouth curves upwards and it's eyes have yellow to orange irises compared to the Roach's red. It is essentially a surface feeder living in shoals in the upper half of the water.
Methods of Capture. The most favoured method is float fishing on the drop. A small waggler fished with little or no weight on the main line which should be about 1m in length. Maggot, castor or bread either punched or a small flake allowed to sink slowly through the water, with loose fed samples of the same, will tempt the Rudd to feed.
The Tench are a bottom dwelling fish feeding on crustaceans, larvae and bloodworms and is generally found in small shoals.
Methods of Capture. One of the best baits to use for Tench is small red-worm or red maggots. These can be fished with float methods ideally 'laying on'. The float needs to be set about 10cm over depth so that the bait is actually resting on the bottom.