Where the obesion with Estates started.
All through my carping career i've never been into "runs" waters or any fads that often go about in the mags etc. Ive always just had one interest and thats just to catch the fish im going for! I like the difficult aspect of fishing estates and old pits. Its got so much more accomplishment than any other type of fishing, mainly because if you dont know the carp, then your not going to catch 'em! It really is as simple as that.
In general, carp stocks in these type of venues tend to below with most of the resident carp being quite old, and with the exception of a couple of pounds either way do not tend to change in weight over the years. In the waters that I have fished, a similar trend seams to have emerged with respect to the weights of the carp, the average weight tends to be around the 28b mark with a handful of mid to upper doubles and a handful of mid to upper twenties with one or two pushing through into the 40's and even further in some cases. I am not saying that all small pits and estate lakes conform exactly, and can come up with a number of examples that quite obviously do not conform, however in my experience on the lakes that I have fished this is the case. The lakes also tend to be mixed fisheries with other species including roach, Bream, rudd, pike, tench and some very big perch.
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History - Whilst the small pits tend to have been created by extraction of gravel, clay or sand; estate lakes tend to have been created for other purposes and by different means. Rather than digging a lake, estate lakes were usually created by damming off a stream, brook or river that runs through the estate, and is the reason a number of these waters have an inlet and an outlet. The majority of these type of waters will have a deep channel running through the centre where the original stream bed ran. These waters were created for a number of purposes, sometimes as a water supply, but often just as an ornamental lake, sometimes for his lordship to take guests fishing, usually for pike, or in order to attract ducks and geese to the estate for shooting. Lazy summer days were often spent floating around the lake in a boat, and is the reason why a number of estate lakes will have an old decrepit boathouse. Redmire Pool is probably the most famous example of a lake created by damming of a stream.
Quite often in clay areas, lakes were created by the construction of a mansion. Bricks and tiles for the mansion would often be hand made using the clay in the ground and the bigger the mansion, the bigger the lake as more excavation of clay was necessary. Similar lakes were also created by small independent brick companies, and even now, years after the demise of these businesses, evidence of this still exists in the way of broken bricks and tiles in the earth around the lake.
The lakes tend to be quite old and therefore very mature, some to the extreme where anglers who are not used to waters of this nature would class them as being too overgrown. To me this is part of their beauty and attraction. It is in these estate lakes and brick pits that I have gained most of my fishing experience, and despite their small size the very nature of them can make for some difficult and interesting fishing.
Firstly are the fish that patrol around most of the lake. These fish tend to follow a set pattern over a 24 hour period, and although it is easier to follow the carp around these patrol routes during the spring and summer months, I also believe that some fish continue the pattern throughout the year, only changing if forced to do so by movement of natural food sources. Throughout the patrol route taken by the carp will be regular feeding areas and as a rule of thumb feeding fish can often be found in these areas during the early morning and at around dusk.
The second category of fish are those that can be classified as being 'residential', these are fish that tend to stay in one area of the lake, and in comparison to those that follow a regular patrol route, there are far fewer in this category. Residential carp are most often found near to features in the lake, and in particular snags. As with patrolling carp, these residential carp also have favoured feeding areas and times, but these tend to be far less reliable than that of patrolling carp. Quite often the recognised best swim on the lake will be where feeding areas of the patrolling and residential carp over lap.
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By working out patrol routes, feeding areas and locating residential fish, your catch rate can improve dramatically on such waters.
To increase you chances even more it is important to spend time feature finding. Now obviously you are not going to be trying to find gravel bars in a small silty estate lake as you would on a gravel pit, however there are numerous other features that can be found. These can also be divided into two categories, visible features and hidden features.
Visible features are those that can be seen such as snags, Lilly pads, reeds and in clear water weed and shallow areas. Unlike the small pits I have fished, most of the estate lakes have murky, coloured water making sub surface features difficult to see, with Redmire Pool a complete exception to the rule being very clear and weedy.
Some of the hidden features to look for are hard areas in amongst the silt, gravel patches, snags, marginal drop off's and concentrated areas of natural food such as blood worm or water mussels. Always smell you bait when you bring it in and if it stinks of rotten silt particularly if it has not been there long don't fish that spot. I've never caught whilst fishing over smelly silty areas.
I have found that this understanding of fish movement coupled with the knowledge of both visible and hidden features with in a lake has enabled me to fish far more productively than the angler that believes due to the size of the water fish must pass over his bait and soon enough one will find it too irresistible. This does happen but not often enough for me and I am grateful that there are anglers who are happy to sit and wait.
Incidently, I have never weather conditions found to make anywhere near as much of a difference as it does on larger waters, although temperature, strong winds and rain fall do obviously have an effect on feeding patterns.
Because of the low membership figures on a lot of these waters I often find myself in the fortunate position of being the only person at the venue which therefore allows me to move around the lake unhindered by other anglers, this gives me the perfect opportunity to move around just ahead of the fish and set my traps.
It is not always possible to fish in this idyllic manor due to the presence of other anglers and when I am in a situation where there are a few other people on the lake or in my favoured swims I will use this opportunity to get to know a swim or an area of a lake better.
I will still fish in the same way as that way at least I can be confident in something even if it is not the particular area I am in. More importantly, it has paid dividends. I have discovered new feeding areas in parts of the lake that I have tended to ignore in the past.
To conclude, I would recommend anyone who intends fishing these types of venues to get to know the pattern of the carp's movements around the lake, find the features and watch for feeding areas, particularly at common feeding times such as first light and dusk. Feed the margins and keep an eye on them. Don't be afraid to try something different, and don't be worry about sticking to winning formulas.
Talk to people and find out what they have caught, where from, what method and what bait they used. Some won't tell you, some will, and other will tell you but not the truth, its up to you do decide which information to take on board and which to discard.
