Camelot Lake - Wortwell, Suffolk.

I visited this venue a few weeks ago with my friend Tobias. We fished a twin peg called ‘The Bench’-it has a massive bench next to it which has to be seen to be believed. There were a couple of guys fishing next to the car park who said they had caught very little, which did not bode well. They were also surprised that we had chosen to fish the twin swim as it was very shallow.

We established camp with confidence however due to Tobias’ previous visit where he had a successful session from the ‘shallow’ swim using dummy rubber sweet corn. The swim has lily pads directly to its front where Tobias had unfortunately lost a fish during his previous session. We decided to fish either side of the pads with Tobias to the right and myself to the left. Having four rods in the water we put one tight to the lilies and one toward the margins each, Tobias in shallow water under a tree and myself in much deeper water along a slightly overhanging hedge. We both employed the same tactics that were successful from the last session, basically sweet corn on a standard lightweight running hair rig. I opted for a mix of single dummy sweet corn combined with two grains of real corn. We chucked out a sparing bed of hemp and corn over our chosen locations.

All was quiet in the evening and the night fell, the rats came out to sniff about our bivvy and bait, they weren’t perturbed by our presence at all. We retired to our bivvy at 1am and got our heads down for some sleep. I was awoken by my left hand bite alarm wailing and discovered a fairly hefty feeling fish on the end, after a fairly uneventful fight I landed it with the aid of a groggy Tobias. The fish was a nice 13lb common.

 Dreadful picture but it was very early!

The shallow area to the right (Tobias) was constantly groomed by ducks which eventually led to a false screaming run at 5am much to Tobias’ frustration. There were no more fish to be had within our 24 hour session; apparently the guys fishing across from us had pulled out a fish similar to mine but nothing exceptional.

I decided to change tactics in the morning and using boilies in place of sweet corn, but the rats had nibbled away at the base of Tobias’ mesh net gaining ingress to the air dried boilies within (note to self; hang boilies out of reach of rats!).

All in all I was happy with the one fish, the rats were an interesting experience but the location is nice but a tad too near to the A143 traffic, however we did see a kingfisher flitting about on the far bank. This lake is said to have some nice big fish and I look forward to having another session here in the near future.

Valley Farm Fisheries - Hidden treasure.

I have only recently discovered and fished Valley Farm Fisheries over the past six months; it has somehow eluded me until the present time. The lake is tucked away in Walpole, Suffolk, in a very peaceful location, there are a number of nice features with deep pit areas, overhanging trees and islands.

The lake is stocked with a very nice mix of fish species including roach, rudd, bream, perch and carp (predominantly common and mirror). The owner told me that he had also stocked it with a few small Barbel but has not seen them at all. There is an otter fence erected along the lake perimeter which is reassuring and the whole venue is immaculately maintained. Landing nets and unhooking mats are provided with the use of ones own forbidden for disease control. There are signs up reminding fisherman not only of the rules and regulations but notes on fish welfare too which is refreshing to see. The owner/bailiff is full of advice and has been there every time I have fished, very useful if you need advice or tips.

The fishing has a lot to offer, I have had a great evening fishing for carp on the surface along one of the margins using bread and a surface controller where I caught ten plus fish above 6lb with the biggest being 13lb. Here are some samples from that session.

There are nice tench to be found lurking under the trees along with good perch, interestingly I caught a tench using a small tutti frutti boilie combined with a cage feeder and a hemp and sweet corn mix cast straight under a tree in only a few feet of water, I wasn’t targeting them but was happy with it nonetheless.

There are bream to be had as well all of which I have caught with red maggots, which is also the preferred bait of the resident perch. That is the most interesting thing about the lake in question there is such a well balanced mix of fish that they are all up to offer, I am quite sure red maggots would produce anything in the water with boilies targeting the carp, treacle soaked sweet corn also worked well.

Overall I recommend Valley Farm Fisheries for those of us who aren’t crazy on commercial carp fisheries and for people that truly appreciate catching good specimen fish of all species. £7.50 for an adult day ticket.