The Old Lake

This 200-year-old tree-lined Victorian estate lake surrounded by irises and lilies covers 12 acres and has 75 pegs. Old Bury Hill, or the ‘Old Lake’ as it is known, holds a fantastic head of specimen carp, with several 30s and plenty of doubles and 20s, and is also noted for huge catches of specimen tench and bream, and outstanding winter predator sport with numerous double-figure zander and pike.

Fishing is available from both bank and boat, the lake’s purpose-built punts giving access to the famous ‘Jungle’ area, which is noted for its huge catches of specimen tench.

Probably the oldest, prettiest and arguably most prolific commercial fishery you will have the pleasure of wetting a line in, Old Bury Hill is a tree-lined and lily-fringed 12-acre estate lake bursting with fish. Maintained as a traditional, mixed coarse fishery, the Old Lake boasts a huge head of quality carp, tench and bream, along with an abundance of roach, rudd, perch, crucian carp, chub, pike and zander, providing all-year-round fishing.

Among the specimens are carp of over 30 lb, bream of over 10 lb, tench of 9 lb, zander to 16 lb, crucian carp to 4 lb 8 oz (caught in summer 2016) with perch, roach and rudd.

The tactics adopted range from hair-rigged boilies by carp anglers to pole or feeder by match anglers, and waggler by pleasure anglers. The fishing is relatively straightforward and huge catches are a regular feature on this large, prolific lake, especially in spring and summer. A five-hour match catch of 168 lb was recorded in 2017 from the Long Bank, and John Houseman and Chris Tulley once shared a 500 lb haul from a boat, which included tench and bream to over 8 lb.

Individual hauls of 100 bream in a pleasure session have been recorded, of fish averaging 4 lb apiece, and the bream are remarkably resistant to cold weather, providing match anglers with good bags of fish even when they have had to break a hole in the ice to fish their peg.

The water recirculation regime on the Old Lake ensures plenty of bites, because the constant ‘flow’ keeps the fish moving and feeding. The deeper water off the front bank is a great place for big bags of winter ‘slabs’, with chopped worm and casters in feeders a good tactic, though ‘tea-bags’ of pellets in small PVA mesh parcels is also popular with match and pleasure anglers.