Albury Estate March Newsletter

Albury Estate Newsletter

Dear Anglers

So here we are again as another season ends, all at Albury Estate would like to thank you for your support this year in what has been a challenging year mainly due to some fairly extreme weather! 

The season started well as it always does with all venues fishing well but last summers high temperatures and low rainfall made summer fishing very challenging, coupled with unprecedented levels of weed growth in nearly all the lakes it really was a tough summer. The normal problems we have with lice weren’t so prolific partly due to careful stock management in the hot summer months and concentrating stocking levels on the cooler lakes and river beats. Fishing didn’t really recover until November when lake temperatures finally began to cool and not long after we were hit by freezing conditions resulting in weeks of frozen lakes. After the lakes thawed fishing was excellent and has remained so.

Please remember that all this seasons blue tokens will expire at the end of March 2023 and will not be extended beyond this. If you don’t catch your fish before the end of the season you can exchange them for frozen fish to be collected from the fishing lodge Monday to Friday 8am -4.30pm. This will run to the end of the season 31^st March. Alternatively fresh fish can be collected from the fish farm from March 20^th to 24^th by appointment only. Please call fish farm manager Richard King  on 07967 461063.

Carp

Looking ahead to next season and we have some very exciting news! We will be changing Mill House lake at Weston to a fly fishing for carp lake.

This will be available as a stand alone day ticket but will also be included as part of the season membership package. It is hoped that this will give anglers an option of good sport during the difficult summer months and also affords a catch and release option. To fish for carp anglers must adhere to a strict set of rules shown below. 

Only anglers in possession of a carp day ticket or relevant season membership may fish for carp.

• Fly fishing is the only permitted method of fishing.
• All carp caught must be carefully returned to the water
• Only barbless flies maximum size 8 may be used. No other bait is permitted 
• A minimum leader strength of 8 lb must be used
• Anglers must have a suitably large landing net with Knotless mesh
• Anglers must use an unhooking mat (available to purchase in lodge), carp must not come into contact with the ground. 
• Anglers may feed a small amount of floating pellet which must be purchased from the lodge
• Maximum of 8 anglers on the lake at any one time.
• All anglers must dip their landing net before and after their session in the disinfectant tub
• Anglers must sign in and out of the catch return book and record any carp caught

New Season

Mainly due to increases in production costs on the fish farm we will have to increase our prices by around 10% for the coming season.

Next seasons memberships and tokens will be available to purchase soon, keep an eye on the website and social media for updates. As ever the best value option for regular visitors is to purchase season membership, this will allow you unlimited visits to Weston, Vale End, Powdermills and Syon Park as well as fly fishing for carp included in your membership package. Also remember season rod members can purchase tokens in higher multiples making the cost per token cheaper.

Rules

It saddens me to say that this year we have experienced an increasing level of rule breaking, with more anglers practicing catch and release and abusing the token system by taking more fish than they declare.

As such we have banned several anglers caught doing this and we will now issue a lifetime ban to any angler caught breaking the rules. Taking fish without paying for them is theft and not only does this impact the business financially it is also unfair to the other anglers as it reduces the stock levels in the lakes.

Please ensure you fill out the catch return accurately and place the correct number of tokens in the returns box.

River Season

The river season starts on the 1st of April with all venues in Albury having a section of river available to fish. Please note any wild brown trout caught must be returned, all rainbow trout caught in the river must be killed and included in your bag. If you’ve not yet tried the river this could be the season to give it a go especially in the warmer months when the lake fishing gets hard. Feel free to ask the bailiffs for advice on the river and lake fishing and they will be happy to help.