Fishing report: First half of August 2026

Some more amazing summer carp & cat fishing ☀️

To start this month, we welcomed back Stephanie and husband Don along with their son Connor and girlfriend Beth. They were super happy to be back at the lake and were itching to get started. Don was fishing 3 rods and Beth and Connor were sharing three rods between them. Having done the tuition with me the first visit, we did a whistle stop tour of the lake and left them to settle in.

The guys caught well from the off and had a super productive session. Beth was super happy with her PB catfish. We don’t know exactly how big it was but from the photos it’s well in excess of 100lb. Don also had a whopper that we estimated to be at least 130lb. Not to be left out in the catfish stakes, Connor had a chunk that was just a little smaller than Don’s… absolutely brilliant!

It wasn’t just the big catfish that were mad for it this week either.  The carp fishing was also super busy. In total they banked 30 carp between. Most were 30’s, one or two 40’s and a few upper twenties thrown in for good measure. They smashed all their own records from the first visit and literally fished till they dropped.  They even fished the last night and Connor was still landing his last fish of the session by the time they were meant to be on the road! Massive shout out to mum Stephanie who fed and watered the troops. She even slept out a few nights herself as she didn’t want to miss out on any of the fun.

The guys were happy to adopt our low bait approach and it worked very well. Rigs were kept exactly how we’d set them up on their first trip when they took the tuition: Blowback multi rigs and a running inline lead. It’s not fancy, not complicated but it’s extremely effective. Because they had the fundamentals locked in, it was just a question of picking a spot, set and trap and catch another. 

It was a cracking week’s fishing and we were super pleased they had such a great time.

Next up we welcomed back Alex and Nicola with their son Harrison. Alex is a super keen angler with tons of experience under his belt. They came to us for the first time last year, loved it and were back for some more fun this year.

Alex adopted the standard approach of a running inline lead and had lots of fun experimenting with rigs… not that that made any difference as every rig he tied caught something! Alex does the rig tying for his son as well and reckoned he was prepping 15 rigs a day, minimum. That sounds about right actually as we know Steve and his son Charlie from a few weeks ago got through 90 rigs on their session and 6×15=90. So that’s 90 hooks and a few meters of hooklink. Was it worth it? Absolutely. The number and size of the catfish that Alex caught was just crazy. Again, the fish were kept in the water but based on the photos, let’s just call 5 x 100lb+ catfish 💪

The carp fishing was also very good. In total they landed 39 carp including 5 x 40s and 1 x 50. Sammy came out 3 times and we saw a few more kittens. What I was really impressed with is that Alex only lost 1 fish. Okay it was unfortunately absolutely huge but TBH to only lose 1 and catch what he did set this week apart and was something very special.

On his first visit to us when they were here for two weeks, Alex got through a lot of bait but he also caught a lot of fish. This year he used a fraction of the bait, 12kg of boilies and 2.5kg of micro pellets and caught double the amount of fish… I know that might not make sense but this is what we are seeing week in week out. Want to catch more? Use less bait. The carp don’t need to be triggered into feeding. The carp are smashing everything they can. Using more bait is only going to delay your next bite, not speed it up. This season has certainly been an eye opener for us on so many levels.

For rigs, Alex chucked everything he could at them. Not because he wasn’t catching, he just wanted to test the rigs he knew against the fish when they were in a compliant mood. The result? Everything worked. That’s not to say that any old rig will work here because it won’t but if you are tying fresh rigs every time (which is the key to success on any water), then as long as the rig doesn’t tangle then lots of different rigs work. What won’t work is trying to re-use rigs or re-sharpening rigs when really you should just be changing them.

It was great to see them again and we are delighted that they had such an amazing fishing holiday with us.