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Displaying items by tag: match lake
Its always a pleasure to try out a brand new fishery. That sense of the unknown just adds to the excitement you already feel when going fishing. Well that was definitely the case today. Jenny had spied a sign to Wood Lane Farm Fishery on her way back from work one day and had been suggesting we try it for some weeks now. Then funnily enough, Nigel Laughton [check his pics out in the gallery] sent Fish South East an email explaining about Wood Lane Farm and the fishing on offer there.
When we arrived, it was, as luck would have it, pouring with rain. After a brief stint sheltering in the car, the skies started to brighten and we were on !! Wood Lane farm consists of two coarse fishing lakes. The larger lake is the match lake and is probably around 3-4 acres with I'd say room for about 20-30 swims. It is pretty featureless and exposed. The smaller lake is more sheltered with swims seperated from each other by tress and bushes, giving it more of a secluded feel. I guess its around half the size of the match lake. I was "reliably" informed that 4 hour matches on the match lake have already been won with weights approaching 200lb and that the second lake holds carp to 30lb. One word of warning - because the fishery is fairly new, the owner hasn't built proper swims/pegs yet, and as some of the banks are fairly steep, care needs to be taken, especially in the wet.
So enough of this waffle - was the fishing any good you want to know, right? Well in a nutshell, yes it was good. We made a start on the match lake fishing the far bank near the three big trees and it soon became apparent that the lake was absolutely stuffed full of fish. We caught an endless stream of roach, skimmers, chublets, tench and hard fighting carp up to about 2lb. Everthing was on the small side but we had great fun on light tackle and the action was non stop. Sweetcorn, pellets and meat all seemed to gobbled up with equal relish by the hungry fish. They won't stay small for long!
Having sent a few hectic hours on the match lake, we decided to try our luck on the second lake. We chose a swim in the left hand corner of the lake where it looked like there would be some likely fish holding spots. It was pretty evident right from the off that the second lake was very well stocked too and straight away we were catching ths same fish as in the match lake although on the slightly larger size. The weather gods decided to ruin our fun shortly after that so we decided to call it day.
Wood lane Farm is located about 500 metres down Wood Lane on the left hand side as you approach form Iver. Prices are £10 per day and you must use barbless hooks, dip nets and you cannot use groundbait, boilies and nuts. Despite these restrictions, I would suggest that once the owner has made the venue a bit more access friendly [forget it at present if you are disabled], this will be a cracking venue and will become very popular. So give it a go while you can still get a swim.
Til next time, happy fishing!! Paul @ UK Fisherman
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