Fun day at Barford Lakes

So, it is the end of the season on the rivers and broads but my attention has returned to inland waters and carp fishing (plus whatever else happens to be in the pond or lake at the time). On Friday (the 29th March) it promised to be a nice sunny day and I had intended to go to Stanninghall lakes near Crostwick but when I got there it was closed as it is under new management. Having been thinking I ought to go somewhere new anyway I quickly got out my phone and started searching for other lakes to the west and south of where I was. The mistake I made was not checking first that they were members only or not and so I ended up at Layfields Lakes at Great Witchingham. So then I had to search again and opted for Barford Lakes off the Watton Road.

Barford have eight lakes, two of which, the Pleasure and Top Lakes, are available to day ticket holders all year round. A day ticket is a slightly more expensive £8 for adults but there is a tackle shop on site and you can use two rods. After talking to a guy fishing on the Pleasure Lake I opted to try the Top Lake.

A funny thing happened to me as I was setting up. In my youth I would have been severely embarrassed but nowadays I can laugh it off. I had set up my seat and was about to tie a hook sitting down but as my bum hit the seat the rear legs gave way and I went right over onto my back with my legs ending up in the air! It wasn't easy extricating myself from this position either. The guy next to me asked if I was alright but we had a chuckle. I think I just hadn't locked the back legs of my seat into position.

It was a fine sunny, and mostly warm, day but two things were niggling me until I eventually moved. One was the slightly cold nagging wind and the other was the sun dazzling me as I had recently lost my sunglasses. I had arrived about 11am and during the rest of the morning until early afternoon things were a bit slow. I had chosen a corner of the lake where I could see a few carp surfacing, so I knew where to put my bait. I had sweetcorn with me and the first carp I caught was a crucian. Then I was trying a bit of bread crust float fished on a shallow depth in the corner and I had the first of several common carp. They were a good size. I could see another guy fishing on the right-hand bank from me catching some larger carp float fishing deeper into the lake.

Later in the afternoon I had had enough of the dazzling sun and moved to the bank on my right:-

This was the view from this new peg. The peg that I was at before is in front of the red car. I had some more commons from this location on sweet corn and this nice condition fish weighed 4lb:-

The orange disgorger gives you a sense of scale. It is 13.8cm long making this fish 48cm or 18.9 inches. Annoyingly two of the fish I caught that day were foul hooked and this really gets me down. I am going to try harder at avoiding this as much as possible.

Just to say that another guy a few pegs to the left of where I sat originally had a carp of over 13lb. I guessed it was a big fish as I could see the tail hanging over the edge of the landing net!

All text and pictures copyright Duncan Hale-Sutton 2019.