Where To Fish – Blackhorse Lake
Graham West heads to Great Linford Lakes to cast his eye over up-and-coming match venue – Blackhorse Lake!
Love it or hate it, social media can be excellent for discovering matches to fish, new venues or just venues that are fishing their heads off!
This is something that occurred to me recently when a local water which I’ve fished in the past started posting some amazing reports and with matches making a return there, I was more than interested in finding out more…
Blackhorse Lake is located on the Great Linford Lakes complex in Newport Pagnell, the complex has traditionally been associated with being a syndicate carp venue over the years but that has now changed, as a number of the lakes are now under new management and available on day tickets!
Fishing on Blackhorse has always been available to match anglers and the venue has staged lots of matches over the years, well known for its brilliant bream fishing and with an abundance of small fish present too, plenty of bites can be had on a wide range of tactics.
The lake has recently been stocked with a huge number of quality bream and Tench which have been removed from the neighbouring carp lakes, and catches so far have been nothing short of staggering with some 200lb weights of bream and Tench caught by pleasure anglers.
The development of the fishery doesn’t just end at fish stocks either, there is an extensive café under construction and plenty of work around the lake is being done to improve pegs.
With plenty of matches planned for the venue, including a big money event which will be announced shortly, Blackhorse is likely to be on the radar of natural venue enthusiasts in the very near future, so we just had to come along and sample the fishing for ourselves.
Be Positive!
With plenty of 100lb plus catches of bream and Tench over the last few weeks, catching a number of fish was on the cards so this had to be reflected in my feeding strategy! Today I have mixed up a bag of 50:50 Method and Paste Green, and soaked a full bag of Micros which will form the base of my feed.
To accompany this, I’ve got the full bream menu consisting of maggots, worms some corn and casters.
When fishing venues like this it’s really important to assess the conditions, and with not too much wind putting just a light ripple on the water and warm conditions it’s not perfect bream weather by any means, so I’m going to fish two different styles today to give myself the best possible chance.
On the cage feeder line which is wrapped up at 51 metres, I’m going to feed 10 bait-up feeders at the start to give me an area of bait for a large number of fish to settle on.
I’m also going to fish an embed feeder at 60 metres, quite a way past this fed area in case it turns out to be a day where the fish won’t settle over a bed of bait.
Simple Set Up!
The cage feeder rig today is a basic helicopter set up which I find excellent for fishing at longer distances as tangles are kept to an absolute minimum.
On this I’ve used a 12ft Parabolix Pro SUV Feeder rod, ideal for these slightly longer casts and quality fish, this is teamed with a 5500 Parabolix Black Edition Reel loaded with 0.12mm prototype MAP braid and an 8 metre 0.23mm Optimum Power shockleader.
Length of hook length is really important in my opinion, today with not too much wind and tow, I’m going to go somewhere in the middle around 60cm long, but if it was windy and the lake was towing hard this would be a metre long.
I really do believe that in windy conditions a longer hook length gets more bites mainly because some bait comes off the feeder in the tow and moves away from the feeder, so it’s with more water movement, it’s possible to get more bites on a long hooklength.
Today I’ve opted for 0.15mm Optimum Power as we’re hoping to catch some quality bream and Tench, with a size 12 hook.
On the Embed feeder I’ve opted for a 32g feeder, this time with a 12ft Parabolix Ultra II SUV rod, same reel but this time I’ve got a 6lb mono mainline to an 8 metre 0.23mm leader again, at the business end, 4 inches of 0.19 Optimum Power to a size 14 hook with a hair rigged spike, perfect for presenting wafters.
The Session
After feeding my initial ten bait up feeders at 51 metres, I wanted to give that some time to settle so I loaded my Embed feeder and chucked this away from the baited area to see if I could pick up an early bite while the main area settled.
Unfortunately, after three casts I’d not had a bite which wasn’t totally unsurprising as I felt the fish would prefer to be on bait with the big weights that had been caught recently. So, it was time to move onto the cage feeder, where hopefully, a few fish had arrived.
Baiting up with a worm and maggot hook bait I chucked the feeder to the clip and sat back expecting something to happen fairly soon, it didn’t take too long either when the tip pulled round, and I picked up into a solid resistance!
The tell-tale nodding on the other end suggested that I was into my first bream and I slipped the net under a lovely clean fish of around 4lb, a great start!
Another bream followed 20 minutes later, followed by quite a lull in action, I was now considering whether to pick up the bait up rod again or not, and with the weather warm and a lack of wind today I decided against it and just waited for my next bite.
The next bite a couple of chucks later nearly pulled the rod in, and it was clearly not a bream! After a great scrap, a stunning 4lb Tench popped up which was more than welcome, plenty of these had been caught lately so it was nice to catch one myself, and there aren’t loads of venues like this one where Tench are a target in matches.
What that Tench did suggest to me though is that the bream had moved out of the peg, they tend to be a bit more solitary than bream and the lull in bites left me wondering what to do next. As I said, the conditions are the deciding factor, and I had to just plug on instead of risking ruining the peg with more bait.
It had been a good start, I had three quality fish in the net in just over an hour but I was getting more and more signs my peg was full of small fish – Blackhorse is an incredible venue for bags of roach and rudd – and these were causing me some issues, probably because of the lack of bigger fish in the peg.
After catching plenty of small fish I had to have a change, and it was clear that the smaller particles I was feeding had drawn the small fish into the peg, so I picked up the embed rod and chucked it to 60 metres past the baited area with a yellow wafter hook bait.
This was a real waiting game but at around ten-minute intervals, the rod would pull round and I was catching big fish regularly again! These were mainly bream between 3 and 7lb plus another big Tench of around 5lb!
With an upturn in sport that I don’t think would have happened had I sat on the cage feeder, it just goes to show that the conditions play a huge part of venues like Blackhorse.
Being positive doesn’t always mean piling the bait in, it can also be just as positive to fish with bigger hook baits on very positive rigs like a method or embed feeder.
As the session drew to a close, I was catching plenty of bream ending up with 14 fish, and on the last cast I nearly lost the rod while putting a few bits away on the side tray as a big Tench picked up my hook bait.
If I’d have lost this fish I would have said it was a carp it pulled that hard… but eventually I managed to net it, the biggest of the day at over 6lb a stunning fish and the perfect way to end our spring session at Blackhorse.
With 70-80lb of bream and tench in the nets, it was time for a quick catch shot and head for home. I really couldn’t have wanted for anything more (other than some windier and overcast conditions!) from our session here.
With plenty of matches planned at the lake, I don’t think it’ll be too long before it’s on your radar, what a venue.
