Visit from fishing legend Ray Kemp - The Colonel

Yesterday we had the pleasure yet again of having Ray Kemp AKA The Colonel (made famous alongside Chris Yates) fishing here at Lonsdale. Here Ray has kindly given us an account of his day fishing.

Hello Paul

My night was filled with dreams of jagging roach, creaking cane and mugs of piping hot coffee, delivered to the swim by my trusty butler. With that in mind, I must thank you heartily for allowing me to christen the recently renovated James Aspindale 'Suredale' on your lovely Willows pool at Lonsdale. I had a joyful day. It literally was a bite a cast, resulting in a catch of pristine Rutilus gracing my net, the best being five at 3/4lb, one at 1lb exactly, one at 1lb 9oz and one at 1lb 10oz. All fell to breadflake on a size 12 barbless long shank hook, fished close to the bottom beneath a quill float and between one and two rod lengths out. Light feeding with mashed bread, of course, traditional angling at it's finest.

It took me a while to work out these fish needed to 'run' with the bait before striking. No finicky fiddling and barely detectable movements of the float here; more hard charging takes that resulted in misses if struck too soon. Putting the rod in the rest and folding my arms was the answer!!!! Another abiding memory of the day will be 'the Jaws moment', when, barely a rod length out, one of your mirror carp 'head & shouldered' unannounced, causing me to nearly choke on my coffee. I imagine it was either tearing into the shoal of fry near the surface or scoffing on the odd bits of floating bread mash; or, maybe, just saying 'hello' to the old Colonel, ' catch me if you dare'. Another day, dear boy, another day.

In all, a very fine day. So fine, in fact, I forgot how cold I was, making the regular mugs of steaming coffee you kindly supplied a real godsend. Thank you, my friend. Here's to the next time.

Best regards

Ray

Thanks Ray, looking forwards to seeing you again soon! Dad says you could give Chris a run for his money as this would be a good start to 'The Colonel's Fishing Diaries'.

Paterson's Pike

Out yesterday a belting 28lb 4oz pike!

Landed by Mr. Paterson on his first visit to Lonsdale - photos to follow

Richard Reels in - is it winter?????????

Well last week saw this lovely 20lb 7oz carp landed & this week a 8lb Tench. With the next couple of weeks predicted to be decent weather lets see what happens. Like us the fish don't seem to know what season it is.

Thanks for the photo Richard.

Kenny's Carp

Last week saw kenny Coulthurst visit us again. During his 4 day beak he had some good catches including this 25lb 8 oz Common.

Thanks for sending the photos Kenny!

Plenty of Predators!

Well the year is starting to turn towards autumn now and there's no denying it. We've picked the sloes and a daily ceremony of shaking the sugar, gin, and sloe mixture will take place until this time next month.

Last week Chris Platt stayed with us with his Dad Todd, son Jonny and his mate Steve. The boys targeted the carp and pike over the week mostly on the Arches.
Chris was rewarded with a toothy 24lber - which looked much bigger, whilst Steve had 8 fish in just a couple of hours. Steve was less lucky though when his battle with Lucius ended in a quick trip to A&E - one of the fish shook it's head violently and the treble buried deeply into his hand. All came right in the end though, and we look forwards to posting the boys photo's!

Meanwhile a local angler Jake, also enjoyed his holiday with us, pursuing the predators and was well rewarded.

Our current Autumn special offers (for a limited time only) - include lakeside cottages from £250 a week,
and of course we have plenty of Dead baits, plugs and lures in stock for the Pike season,
so give us a ring for a quote / more information on: 07770825896

Autumn glory!

As you can see we're making the most of our belated Indian summer!

I was fishing with Dad last week in the evening sunlight, and decided to take one of the weights off my already simple set up (Split cane, centre pin, float that Dad made when he was a boy, 2 BB and a hook) to leave my float laying on.
I pinched a flake of bread onto the hook in my own particular way and settled down.

I have never outfished my Dad. Not sat together side by side. (I like to think it's all the 'experience' he has on me)
But this night there was something going on. Maybe it's the pheromones.
My float twitched and slid under as one of the big roach got greedy. A few more big roach and Dad's float was decidedly still not 8 feet from mine. He re cast encroaching on my swim, and my float promptly quieted too.

A few minutes later and my float slowly right itself and slid away. Definitely 'carpy'. Not a heavyweight but he was determined to punch above his class! The Mark Simmonds stocked into the Willlows are very heavy set, strong fish, and once I got him to the bank I realised he was nearly as thick as my hands span - so I had to cradle him very carefully for a quick photo!

I slipped him back with instructions not to mention this to Walter, and settled down again.
The quiet was disturbed by the unmistakable "chi-keeeeeee" of the kingfisher as he swooped the length of the lake, banked around and to our surprise settled in to the young willows just on our right:
Once he'd arrived I got a bit distracted trying to take a picture, but did manage to land a few more very lovely roach.
And you guessed it. Dad's float might as well have been a monument to stoicism
(The endurance of pain or hardship without display of feelings or complaint)

So it was an evening to remember for a long time for me, and one worth sharing. Dad's certainly been back on form and soundly trounced me since!

Still at least the carp are still feeding!

PS: If you'd like to come and fish the Willows or the Secret Pool contact us on 07770825896 to book the Secret Cottage which has exclusive rights to these two cracking lakes!