54lb Common Carp
Arthur @ 54.07 (Oct 2012)
2012 has once again been a great year for the lake and for meeting some great guys and great anglers.
The lake was once again pretty solidly booked and saw lots of characters on the bank breaking personal bests and enjoying their break from work, all trying to catch one of the Villefond monsters.
As for the fish unbelievably they have continued their massive weight gains pushing the average size of the fish over 40lb up from last year’s 38lb! We now have over forty 40lb+ fish and at least 4 x 50lb+ fish.
The very unpredictable weather this year meant that the carp spawned heavily twice, and over a drawn out period, so we saw weights Yo Yo and catch reports rise and fall as they fed up and then stopped feeding.
The amount of new uncaught fish has now slowed down as we slowly improve our documentation with pictures. However, we still have some really elusive fish & some of these came out during 2012 including some fish that haven’t been on the bank in over two years and some fish that have only ever been caught twice in four years! As we always say, Villefond is tricky water, the carp are very clever and some anglers this year really struggled and then there were some times they seemed to jump on the hooks.
We had the usual bloom of naturals in the lake and all the same wild life around the lake such as foxes, hares, rabbits, bird life, pine martins, hedge hogs, coypu, the list goes on.
2012 was the first full year we offered the food packages and as you can read on our feedback page we received some great feedback, so we will continue offering this service into 2013. Also the bait proved itself again to be the best fish catcher and with bait choice so important on the lake we will be offering an even better improved bait for 2013.
Work round the lake this winter will continue as always with many man hours going into clearing brambles & weeds, improving swims and access, plus a spruce up of the shower block and mobile home. We have introduced some new rules to help keep the fish in pristine condition as they get bigger and harder to handle along with more rules to help us keep the lake as clean as possible. These rules can be seen on our rules page.
To conclude the lake is still rocketing skyward on its way to becoming something really, really special & we would like to thank all the anglers this year that came to our lake for looking after the fish they caught. This meant they are still pristine for the next angler. We hope that we carry on seeing the faces that make our job a pleasure and wish everyone the best for 2013.
Best wishes,
Mark, John & Debbie Lambert