Trip #131 – Revels Fishery – Main Lake

After the success of our recent fishing trip with me and my eldest, now my younger son wanted to join us. This was going to be tough, but never say that I am not up for a challenge. I decided we were going to fish Revels, a water roughly 25 minutes from where we live, and brands itself the UK’s first commercial fishery.  It’s been a long time since I’ve fished Revels but my last two trips (albeit 10 years ago) were quite successful, so I loaded the car up,  bribed the kids with a McDonald’s and away we went.

Getting to the fishery I could see that the Main Lake didn’t have a match on. As I have never fished it, and because there were some open banks which could house both me and my two children I made my decision. We were only going to be fishing for a few hours so I loaded up my trolley and walked around the lake to our chosen location – chosen by the kids because it had a good view of the horses…

The kids were going to be using the top five sections of my two spare poles, aiming mainly to catch silverfish. I was excited to introduce my youngest to pole fishing, and hoped it was going to be an eventful afternoon. The wind was blowing right into our swim and although there were sunny spells the clouds had started to form, so I was hopeful. In all honesty though it was quite going, given that Revels brands itself as a commercial fishery I had hoped the fishing would be more frenetic. The bites did not come as quickly as I would like.  Still we persevered and they eventually arrived in the shape of a small perch.  We also caught some little roach and rudd.  I had hoped to use my keepnet, but on removing it from my net bag which wasn’t closed over the winter it became very apparent something had been nesting in my net over the colder months (or perhaps using it for bedding material). 

Once the boys had caught an equal number of perch and roach as the fishing was quite slow they became a little bored.  I took my chances, got a few more sections out of the rod bag, slid on a cube of meat and shipped out close to the rushes on my left. Again this was a slightly slow process but before long the float started bobbing.  Eventually it slipped away and on striking the elastic erupted from the top of the pole –  I was in!. Very quickly however I wasn’t in, and with a swirl of water next to the reeds, the fish was off.  My eldest even had the audacity to mock me. I can only imagine the abuse I’m going to get as he gets older.

I shipped in and we went for a stroke around the lake, to check on some other swims… That didn’t happen, and after a quick walk to see the horses and the turkey the boys returned to  their seats where we saw out the rest of the day catching the odd perch, roach and rudd.

It was an enjoyable couple of hours but I couldn’t help thinking the fishing could have been better as it would have held their interest for longer.

I don’t feel like I can give an accurate rating for Main Lake because I was somewhat hamstrung by coercing my two headstrong young children into staying in one place on a frankly slow day.  I’m going to have to return on my own time and fish it properly to see what the lake can really produce. 

I will say though this is one of the benefits of being a YSAA member as fishing Revels is free!