Renny Lakes, East Harlsey, 14th May 2023

Well the second trip out in 2023, the first one didn’t go as planned, I didn’t take to many photographs we didn’t catch any fish and I didn’t write a blog post about it… sorry about that.

So the fishing whatsapp group voted for a day on Renny Lakes which didn’t mean too much of a long drive for Mr Curry or the rest of us. I’d also invited Sam along, Sam last fished back in 2016 so a great chance for him to get hooked a second time so to speak!

The Pegs
Renny Lakes has changed from a three lake complex back to two lakes. So a quick walk round the larger lake we found three pegs next to each other with islands and open water to go at.

Set-Up
I’d brought two rods with me for a simple days fishing while coaching Sam. A waggler rod and a feeder rod with a micro hybrid feeder on.

Bait was simple too, maggots, sweetcorn, 6mm and 8mm pellets.

All-In

I’d just finished plumbing the depth on waggler a few rod length out when Sam arrived. We quickly set his rod up to fish at the bottom of the near shelf so casting would be easy. Double maggot on the hook, float in and first fish in an instance! There was plenty of action from the silver fish and this was great practice for Sam learning to strike and hold the rod to assess the fishes size before landing the fish. Sam was quickly into the grove, hooking the maggots, landing the fish and even disgorging them before release.

This gave me a chance to get on the box and have a fish. Meanwhile Jack and Rich where bagging up to with different approaches, Jack on the waggler fishing a few rod lengths out using sweetcorn on the hook to get past the smaller fish. Rich fishing the pole feeding pellets and fishing an expander on the short pole. Here are a few action shots from Jack!

It was obvious that maggot was just too tempting for the smaller fish so both Sam and I changed to sweetcorn on the hook which resulted in a longer wait time for bites but a better stamp of fish. Sam was getting in on the action with his first carp giving him so great action and teaching him to strike and hold the fish rather than trying to bring it straight to the net once hooked. We kept on feeding maggots heavily to get through the small fish and Sam was soon into another Carp and they were getting a little bit bigger.

Sam was doing everything himself now, baiting the hook, flicking the rig out, landing the fish and taking the hook out. A quick learner, great job Sam!

As the day went on Rich was starting to fish over to the island, when his rig had a chance to settle as there were loads of fish there, it was fish on and pink elastic streaming out.

It was a very bright day and as normally happens we did have some spells where the fish just seem to disappear. Feeding maggots there was still plenty of small roach and rudd in the upper levels in fact it was like a jacuzzi fishing a strung-out rig just resulted in small fish so it was a case of putting all the bulk just about the hooklength loop to make sure the bait gets to the bottom and the better fish.

Another carp for Sam, definitely his best of the day. We changed the feed to 6mm and 8mm pellets cutting out the maggots. I switch to a small hybrid feed to show Sam another fishing “method”. The tip was dancing as soon as the feeder hit the water again the small fish getting in amongst the micro pellets. The tip would fly around and generally, a smallish carp would be in the net.

Packing up we’d had a great day fishing with plenty of bites. As Tees Valley Lakes has changed its Yarm Lake to a specimen carp lake Renny Lakes is definitely the place to get plenty of bites for both the experience and new anglers! Expect to see a blog entry with the kids soon!

More Pictures...