Mark & Carl's Week-end Pike

Mark & Carl have kindly sent us over a couple of photos from their week-end pike fishing trip - Thank you for sending us these & pleased you enjoyed your stay & planning your next trip.

Week-end Pike

Mr Sampson arrived for his 2 day stay on Friday.  As at this morning he & his pal had 8 good sized Pike. Unfortunately didn't catch up with him before he left to see if the total had increased.

Andy strikes Again & Again & there's more

Well,

After enjoying his 3 day stay leaving on Christmas Eve Andy Knowles is enjoying another short break. As you can see by these photos he's off  again! Andy hooked 2 fish both at the same time  luckily on this occasion Julian was near by to help land the fish &  become photographer!

The fish were taken on Frankfurter & Snail pop up.

Here are also a couple of photos of Fish caught on previous visits.

Christmas Fishes!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all our guests and friends!

Andy Knox was granted his christmas fishes during his pre-christmas short stay with us when he had more than his 12 Carp of Christmas on the bank - 8 of which he caught in just five hours! He's had such a good time he's back this Saturday.

Meanwhile I've been working on catching fish without bait this winter, getting more adept at fly fishing for coarse fish and developing my favourite lure selection.

This year I was lucky enough to receive the gift of a Sealey Mayfly rod from Matt, and a Dragonfly Imperial reel from John (Thankyou!) - both regular guests at Lonsdale, and am starting to get to grips with them. A copy of Fly fishing for coarse fish is sitting on my bookshelf from last christmas and it's a lovely book but I have to say trial and error did get me five species in two days with Chub, Roach, and Perch at Lonsdale and my first Rainbow and Brown trout at local water New Mills. 

The fish at Lonsdale are particular fans of pretty much any fly with a gold head. 

Roach seem to take a fly on the drop during the evening, whereas Chub prefer an almost static fly neatly flicked along a nice reedy margin just after the suns hit the water to warm it in the morning.

The eagle eyed amongst you will have noticed the little terrier with the big ears who is 'photo bombing' my shots these days. This is Mouse, newest addition to the Drinkall clan and although she never had the privilege of meeting Mansell, she seems to know just what to do when a camera's about!

And the perch? Well it was just a baby but I have plans for cat whisker lures to entice some stripey's and maybe even a few Jacks.

The Arches has always been excellent sport for Esox, and I've been playing with a few lures amongst our Jacks before I test them with a fly.  You just can't beat a Rapala and our toothy beauties seem particularly fond of my countdown Perch coloured CP-7. I'm afraid there's not many pictures of my Pike because I tend to fish alone on the Arches. It's very peaceful down there and quietly exploring, moving from swim to swim around the bank is something that Mouse loves as much as I do. And when I become fixated with that perfect margin edge where esox simply has to be, Mouse is happily springing about in the wild meadow behind. 

(If you'd like to bring your dog along to Lonsdale they are allowed in some accommodation and are allowed along the banks of the Arches)

However my new adventure in ultra light lure fishing started dramatically yesterday when my new straight from Santa's workshop Tronix Rockfish UL paired with an equally new pink Angry Birds Rapala lure made for a very angry Pike! 

To be honest I was just playing in the edges of the swim on the Arches with my new bright pink lure enjoying it's action and working things out when at the edge of the weed bed the little rod tip arced around alarmingly and something made short run of just a couple of feet to the weed bed. Before I knew what was happening I'd made my mistake, there was a tiny crack, some great toothy jaw released its grip, and the body of a pale pink lure came wobbling upto the surface. A few seconds later I watched with horror as a small black eye and white section of carbon slid down the line to rest on the swivel of my wire trace.

Oh dear. But the realisation I still had my lure brightened my outlook. 

Of course with a little help from Dad's workshop I soon had a new and "improved", slightly shorter version of the Rockfish UL. We've lost count of the rods we've repaired for our guests over the years, but this the first time I've needed to use those skills on my own gear!

From our family to yours - Season's greetings and tight lines!

To return home click: www.lonsdalepark.co.uk

One-Armed Bandits at Lonsdale Park 19th to 23rd September 2013

One-Armed Bandits at Lonsdale Park 19^th to 23^rd September 2013

John & I were back at Lonsdale Park at the special invitation of owners Paul & Val for a long weekend of fishing through the day & evenings in the Lowther Arms!

John is still fairly new to fishing with only one arm, whereas being a past master I was only too keen to show John a few tips & tricks in the art.  Since our first time together a couple of years ago John has been doing a bit of homework, but in fear of the rest of his tackle ending in his local Lancashire canal he needed some urgent coaching J

Fishing the Cottage Pegs of Lonsdale Lake, on the feeder John was immediately into quality roach at exactly the same time as me on the next peg, both were about 12oz.  John switched to the waggler & was catching small roach as well as a few larger ones.  Each fish he put back was chased by a pike that was in front of him all the time.  John also landed a couple of tench to 3lb.  I was sitting it out for some bigger fish on the method but could only hook into a few nice roach.

John’s improved ability to play & land fish, was impressing Paul & I.  Frustratingly he can no longer use his prosthetic arm & tackle tying hook, so I gave him a few tips, while learning a couple of things from him.

Next up was the challenge I set myself a couple of years ago when John said there’s no chance of pole fishing with one arm.  Well, after a few different attempts I, as John said, cracked it.  That said, any distance over 10 metres is hard work, but in the margins you can have great fun.  Back home in Kent, I had landed fish to 17lb but had decided it is for fun only as I’m not competitive using it at match level, yet.

We loaded our buggy & drove to Deer Lake and using his own pole gear on my seatbox & setup John was away and it wasn’t long until John was getting into small carp & decent roach & enjoying seeing having his elastic stretched again.  Most impressively was that he landed them on his own with only a short-handled landing net, which I found very amusing.  I was catching a few carp to 5lb on the cage & method feeder.

During a quiet spell in the fishing we were enjoying the wildlife, especially the pair of Kingfishers that were flying around the lake.  We had such a great day that day we went back & did it all over again for our final day.  Now John can’t wait to get back up there, even if he has to go on his own.

Over a brew with Val & Paul we bid our farewells with extreme gratitude for the invitation.  One last trip to the pub before saying our goodbyes as I was going to leave before John got up the next morning.  All being well we will meet up again next year.

Thank you again Paul & Val

Roy & John

AKA The One-Armed Bandits

The Luck of the Irish!!

Hi Paul and all at Lonsdale,  hope all is well.  

                                                                      I am just getting in  touch to share our experiences of  the truly fantastic  time we have just had during our week’s stay at the  park, and there’s only way to describe it, a session of a life time!

Straight from the off all 3 of us were catching carp, which was a bit of a surprise due to the weather conditions that we were faced with but it soon became clear that the fish were up for a feed, and as the days went on the fishing just got better and better.

Most of the time my Brother Aaron couldn’t keep a rod in the water due to constant double takes, he really did have them in a feeding frenzy, he ended up with a grand total of 59 carp ranging from low doubles to the biggest at 22lb 12oz, a cracking common, which I think is a fantastic achievement considering he was only fishing from just before first light to around midnight, mainly due to the fact that he was well and truly shattered from his constant hauling and needed a good night’s sleep.

Dad and I also had some excellent sport as well with Dad landing a total of 37 carp and 29 for me, with most fish ranging in the mid double, to high teens, again caught on a mix of Richworth and Lonsdale peach & pepper freezer baits over Lonsdale halibut pellet.

The carp weren’t  the only species on the feed as Dad soon found out when he decided to have a go for the pike, after witnessing the constant showers of roach scattering the surface trying to evade capture, and he wasn’t disappointed either, for he had regular takes on  float fished roach and mackerel. Again they came thick and fast in only a few hours fishing each day, and it’s here we have to give testament to you and all at Lonsdale for the superb condition these fish were in not to mention the fantastic average size of just over 12lb topped by the biggest going exactly 22lb.

 At one point he did have a much, much bigger fish on only for her to slip the hooks at the net, gutted wasn’t the word and when asked how big he thought she was he said he wouldn’t  like to estimate her size, but  it was a beast of epic proportions!!!

After experiencing the quality of pike fishing on offer Aaron and I soon decided to follow suit and have a dabble ourselves, and we too managed to bag ourselves a few toothy critters to mid doubles.

I have to say the pike fishing was one of the many great highlights of the trip as unfortunately here in N. Ireland the piking has somewhat diminished over the years due to reasons beyond the anglers control, so it was a real joy to experience  quality pike fishing again.

We even had a few surprises along the way as well in the form of a 1lb 10oz roach, a 19lb pike both caught on boilie a cheeky 2lb perch that had a go at dead bait much too big for it, 3 tench, 2 chub and a UFO for good measure, lol.

All in all an amazing week, and one we will always remember.

No doubt we will be seeing you in the new year, which can’t come quick enough even more so for Dad as he has a score to settle with the Beast!, all the best and tight lines,

                                                                    Michael, Ryan & Aaron Mcilwaine,

                                                                                     Belfast.

Thanks for sending us the write -up & some of the photos from your weeks stay.