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Fishing Diary - 17th August 2007 - Hayfield Lakes Fishery

I had arranged this trip to Hayfield Lakes with my son, Richard, and as Hayfields is the home of Fish-O-Mania we expected a good day - we were not to be disappointed. As the weather forecast had predicted, the day was overcast with intermittent showers, with the wind coming from the west. We arrived at the venue, which is near Bawtry, South Yorkshire, at about 7am.

There are two lakes at this venue, Adam's Lake is a figure of eight water with a bridge across the narrow part, cutting it into what is effectively two lakes. The larger lake is called the Island Lake. Of the two lakes available, we chose to fish on Island Lake, formerly known as Lucy's Lake. This water has over 80 pegs and is situated alongside the River Tone. Both Lakes contain a number of species with carp being the predominant species, including mirrors, commons, ghosties and crucians. Barbel are also stocked along with roach, tench, bream, ide and perch. As it was a weekday (Friday), we had almost all the pegs to choose from and settled for pegs fifty and fifty-one, opposite the central island for which the lake is named.

In the moderate westerly wind and overcast cloud cover we concluded that the cold conditions dictated that the best fishing would be on the bottom. With this in mind, we both decided to fish open ended swim feeders and because lots of carp were displaying themselves close in to the bank we chose to fish quite close in. Personally I would like to have fished the Method feeder, but it is banned at this venue. We soon discovered, after some trial and error, that the best spot was about thirty yards out.

For the first couple of hours we sat and watched the rod tips indicating line bites, but the day had started out being non-productive, then my son struck into a fair sized carp, shortly followed by disaster. The fish took off to his left, which meant that it was coming in my direction, and managed to wrap the line it was towing around my line. At first neither of us new what had occurred and while I was watching the action the tip of my rod swung round and I thought I had a bite and lifted into it. It soon became apparent that we were both trying to land the same fish!



A mirror carp from Hayfield Lakes


Once I had realised what had happened, and that we were both tangled up with the same fish, I walked over to his peg, rod in hand, so that he could land the fish. Then, unbelievably, things got even worse. The carp now managed to wrap line around Richard's landing net handle. If this is a new escape tactic that the carp have adopted then it most certainly works! As can be imagined, in this situation the fish managed to unhooked itself and escaped. From what I had seen of the escapee, I guess it was in the region of 8 to 10lb, and had he landed it, would have been his biggest fish of the day.

From this point on the action seemed to pick up and it looked like the fish had started to feed. Our patience in continuing to feed the swims through the sparse period had now paid off, especially for Richard, who managed to land a couple of carp around the 4.5lb mark. I then landed my first fish of the day, a common carp of about 9lb, quickly followed by a mirror carp of about 4lb. This seemed like a good time to take a break, so we headed for the pub, which is on site, for a late breakfast.



A 9lb common carp from Hayfield Lakes


After a short break and being suitably refreshed, we were soon ready for some more action back on the bank. Richard continued to catch on a regular basis, but I was doing nothing. After giving some thought as to why he was catching and I wasn't, I decided that it must be the hook bait he was using. So I borrowed some of his hook bait and was proved right - I now had a fish every cast.

The bait he was finding so successful was a can of Sensas Mini Meat Balls, which are small peices of luncheon meat in fish oils flavoured with squid! Before you rush out to buy some here is the bad news. My tackle dealer informs me that it is no longer available. So Richard appears to have purchased the very last can in Sheffield! If anyone knows more about this, and whether the bait is in fact still available, I would be pleased to know, send me an email.

At the end of the day Richard had caught more fish, but for some unknown reason I was getting the bigger fish, with a top weight of 9lb, and although we had weighed some of the catch, we had not weighed everything. We estimated that we had each caught approximately the same weight, between 45 and 50lb between us.



Close-up of 9lb carp

Another mirror carp of about 4lb


Although it does not show well on the photographs above, the carp on both lakes at Hayfield Lakes are a wonderful golden colour, if anyone knows the reason for this I would appreciate the information. Are they particular strains of carp, or is it due to conditions at Hayfield Lakes? Whatever the answer is, there is nothing better than seeing those golden fish surfacing as they near the net.



The map below is centred on Hayfield Lakes car park. Zoom out to see the lakes, etc. Click the marker to get directions.