May 2024

2 Day Session, 28th May

2 carp at 35lb and 44lb, 1 sturgeon at estimated 130lb and 1 grass carp at 39lb out on Thursday and Friday last week.

May 2024

New Catch Report, 23rd May

A short session at Blue Lake over the 18th May weekend for 3 local anglers. 3 x mirrors, 1 x common and 4 x grass carp on the bank. Please see the photos below :-)

May 2024

Fish deaths at Blue Lake, 13th May

13th May

We had a further 4 anglers fishing the lake for 72 hours this past week and they caught 4 carp, 2 grass carp and 1 sturgeon (see some of the photos below). Unfortunately the carp began to spawn at the end of the week, understandably switching off the fishing, so there will now be a pause before French anglers resume fishing. 

Sebastien is completely confident in the lake and there have been no signs of any illness or further deaths since April. Sebastien will continue to have some local French anglers fishing ad hoc over the next couple of weeks and our bookings resume 1st June onwards.

6th May

Further good news from Blue Lake, the anglers that were fishing this weekend for a 48hr period landed 3 good carp and had a further handful of runs which they did not manage to connect with / land. The weather was rain, rain & more rain but there was plenty of carp activity. This, combined with no further carp turning up dead, is further strong evidence that any issue at the lake has passed. 

We have more French anglers fishing the lake later this week and will give another catch report then. The weather forecast for Wednesday onwards is much better, as the weather calms and stabilises for a while (we hope!). 

Sebastian is confident that the lake is in full recovery mode, but we aim to use these next couple of weeks whilst we have no bookings on the lake to continue to test fish and give everyone confidence that the rest of the season will be a good one. 

If any one reading this has last minute availability (within the next 2 weeks) and would like a free trip to Blue Lake, with ferry at cost, please get in touch.

1st May

We spoke with Sebastien yesterday and happily we have some good news. 

We have lost only 5 more carp since our last update (on the 22nd April) with the last one coming out the lake 5 days ago. This fish was heavily decomposed indicating it had died days earlier. So Sebastien is confident there have been no new deaths for at least 2 weeks.

He asked two French anglers to fish the lake last weekend and even though conditions were not ideal with night time temperatures below zero, they did catch 2 fish, both healthy and one at 36lb. Furthermore the carp can now be seen and are active and this is another good sign.

We now need more evidence to show the carp are fit and healthy and Sebastien has asked some local anglers onto the lake again next weekend and we will let you know how they get on.

As you know we have cancelled all the May bookings so he’s reliant on his local French anglers who only fish weekends to do his testing so please bear with us a little while longer while we gather more evidence.

We will continue to deal with this issue in an open manner with 100% transparency and we will bring you a further update on Monday after we have had anglers on the lake all weekend. 

Blue Lake remains an extremely well stocked lake and the loss of 55 carp from a stock of 350-400, whilst being hugely regrettable, should not affect the fishing. Given the positive news so far we will not be cancelling any further bookings at this time, and we will let you know the catch reports from this weekend's anglers arriving Saturday.

17th April

Disappointing news from Blue Lake today as the total is now approximately 50 carp lost. Sebastien has therefore decided to give the lake a complete rest, probably up until the end of May, whilst he tries to get to the bottom of the problem and arranges a re-analysis of the carp found dead. We have already contacted all anglers on the lake in May to arrange alternative solutions and thank them for being so understanding.

The next update will be, at the latest, 1st May (13 days from now). By this time, we should have much more information and we will contact all bookings (for June 1st onwards) with a full update. We sincerely hope that we will be contacting you with good news and, of course, if we hear anything before this point we will contact you earlier.

We would ask anglers booked on from June 1st onwards to bear with us for these days so we can assess fully the effect on the lake. As always we give you our assurance that we will remain 100% transparent.

11th April

Overall, it is good news from Blue Lake today - we have had no new deaths. However, when inspecting the lake yesterday afternoon Sebastien did find a further 6 decomposing carp, ones he had not seen before. Such was the decomposition that he is confident these are not new deaths, i.e from this week. This brings the total deaths to 41 carp - a complete mix of sizes, but with 1 x 50 and we think around 3 x 40's. Otherwise everything was between teens and 30's.

We have updated the carp stock on the Blue Lake page to reflect this, with around 310-350 carp remaining.

We will update again on Monday next week. The lake was rested all this week and on Saturday we will have anglers returning.

8th April

This morning we have had an update from Sebastien - since Friday 6 further carp have been removed. This gives us a total of 37 deaths. Sebastien feels that this decrease in number of new mortalities means we are approaching the end.

In terms of sizes, it was a complete range from teens through to what we believe was one 50lb+. The complete ‘mixed bag’ of sizes reflects the stock in the lake.

We will get another update mid week and will update you again then.

5th April

We were contacted by Sebastien, the lake owner, yesterday to tell us that this week an abnormal amount of fish had turned up dead, more than the usual few he would have expected at this time of year.

This prompted Sebastien to immediately send off for postmortem analysis (as some of you may already know, Sebastien also works within the fish farming industry so this is the natural first step). He got the results yesterday, which confirmed that the cause of death was poorly prepared particles.

Whilst this is obviously devastating news, it is preferable to it being viral, which would be something that could affect the lake on a large scale. Sebastien believes once the fish that have eaten the particle (in sufficient quantity) have died, that will be the end of the losses. We expect that to end shortly.

The total tally is 31 carp lost.

No one ever wants something like this to happen, but to put it in perspective there are between 350-400 carp in Blue Lake and so the losses amount to roughly 8% of the total known stock.

The anglers on the lake this week have been contacted and we have discussed this with them directly. We also took the decision it was of course necessary to inform the anglers coming this Saturday with the option to move venue, which will give us time to assess the situation in full.

We will of course continue to give you the up to date information as it unfolds and we will update the latest news for the lake at the end of the week.

If anyone has concerns they wish to discuss with me, you are welcome to call on 01246 854553.