New Year – Offers

Happy New Year and hope everyone had a lovely Christmas!

As we step into 2025 we have lots of things going on and just to tempt you out onto the bank we will be offering a reduced day membership rate of £12.50 until the middle of February. This time of year can really offer up some superb fishing even if the weather can be a bit mixed. Just please remember to continue to pay online and check in and collect your tokens from the fishing lodge/café (Tuesday to Friday). Outside of these times the bailiff will see you on the bank.

The cafe is now back up and running after a short closure over the Christmas period and will be open Tuesday to Friday, 8.30am to 2.30pm. It’s a great place to warm up and grab a bite to eat during the colder months. There has been one noticeable change to the café as Amy has sadly left us to follow a career in teaching. The good news though is that we have another lady called Amy now running the café, so please pop in and say hello. Amy has already been busy rustling up home made leek and potato soup and delicious cakes. Also just a reminder we have lots of cold and hot smoked trout for sale which is available to purchase in the café as well as all your fishing essentials such as flies, leaders etc.

We have been stocking lots of spartic trout this Winter (500 so far) to compliment the fish from our own fish farm and we have another 250 arriving next week which will be circulated around all the fisheries. The Spartics always prove to be very popular so get down and try and catch one. They are a great fighting fish well suited to the colder months. 

While we are talking fish, we will be running a fish farm tour on the 23^rd January at 11am. If anyone is interested please book a place by emailing [email protected]. This is a great chance to see the hard work that goes into rearing our very own trout.

Tactics wise for the next couple of months will predominantly be using a floating line but if its really cold a sink tip or slow intermediate line might be useful. If you can, setting up two rods with these two options can be really handy. At this time of year the fish might be slightly deeper first thing in the morning but any slight lift in temperature will see them move up the water column, so its important to find the feeding depth of the fish at different times of the day and having two rods set up with different lines on certainly helps to do this. Another bit of advice is to keep mobile to locate the fish, once you find one there is a good chance more will come from the same area. 

Fly wise at this time of year the fish will show a preference towards larger lures. My advice would be to swap between olive, black and white lures fished at varying depths and retrieval speeds. Also, although not everyone’s cup of tea fishing static under an indicator can be really effective and you can fish large flies under the indicator such as blobs, worm patterns, egg flies, shammies as well as smaller buzzers.

Tight Lines.