Fishing on the Longleat Estate

We heard on the fishing grapevine that they had started to allow fishing on the 3 lakes at Longleat and where even running a few Wednesday evening matches there.  Their aim was to get a bit of money to subsidise the upkeep and repair of Longleat House.

The first report was that it was quite good fishing as they had re-stocked the lakes with a fairly good head of fish. We managed to get tickets for one of their evening matches and that was our “in” as it were. While we fished the match we spent some time walking the banks of all 3 lakes. Good bags of tench and bream were being caught on the middle lake. Quite a few large carp were being caught in the top lake, which was much deeper than the other two.

 The lake in front of the house was yielding lots of small skimmer bream, roach and perch. The odd tench was also being caught. Overall, the middle lake seemed to be the best bet for a pleasure session. Each lake was about the size of a large football pitch, with the top one being, maybe a bit more than that. We were told that if we wished to fish the lakes in future we just had to turn up and the gamekeeper (Mr Bundy) would issue tickets on the bank. I think the charge was £5 a day, which was quite a lot in those days, but it would turn out to be money well spent in the future as the fishing could be very good at times.

The middle lake was about 100 yards wide and about 150 yards long. It had a quite large island over to the right. Each lake ran into each other from the right and in flood or high winds you would get a bit of a flow or undercurrent from right to left. To ensure you got the best out of those days you had to master the undertow and nail your bait to the bottom as the fish did not take very well when the bait was moving.

The advent of the swing tip and the spring tip was just making an impact to angling at that time and many anglers used them in these conditions to good effect. A very soft feeder rod was required if you were not to continually bump off the fish on the strike when using small hooks.

To continue to catch fish on the float you needed to fish 2 or 3 ft over depth.

With the lake being around 3 feet deep in and around the island, you needed to fish at around 5 to 6 feet so a fair bit of line was along the bottom. That line on the bottom would need to be shotted, “shirt button” style to hold bottom. The float needed to be attached bottom end only, so you could sink the line to stop any wind drift on the surface. There were many floats on the market that would do the job and you just needed one which would allow a 50 yard chuck to the middle of the lake. As the lake was so shallow the bigger shoals of fish would tend to congregate in the middle, especially if there were anglers on opposite banks.

The idea of having a couple of feet of line lying along the bottom was that if your line was coming straight up to the float, you would be plagued with what is known as “line bites” where fish were knocking into your line. If you were to continue float fishing in this manner you could end up thrashing yourself to death by continually striking at line bites, which would end up with possible foul hooking fish would thrash onto the surface and in the end would spook the shoal and they would move away from your swim. This would not happen very often if your hook length and bait were along the bottom and well away from your actual float. It was a bit tricky, balancing your float in a way that would not allow the tip to continually be pulled under by the under flow and ensuring that it would remain sensitive enough to show any shy bites.

As the tow was continually changing through the day, you had to keep adjusting the amount of shot required to hold bottom. On its day the method would outshine any other in the hands of a good angler willing to keep track of the changing conditions. I loved it and it served me well on many occasions. I considered just chucking a ledger in with an “arlesey” bomb attached, to be the lazy anglers way of fishing and considered that my method of float fishing in difficult windy conditions to give me the edge I needed to catch more than them.

 I found that this method of laying 2 or 3 feet of line on the bottom was also a killer on the Kennet and Avon Canal around Pewsey and I am sure that anywhere there is shallow water coupled with a reasonable head of fish, it would work equally well as it cuts out many line bites and the float being away from the actual bait, is less invasive to the shoals. It certainly improved my catches on the canal.

 There was no doubt that these 3 or 4 swims to the left of the island were the best ones to fish and almost guaranteed a large bag of fish especially on warm less windy days.

 Most of the bream were in the 3 – 4lb bracket with tench to 4lb every now and again. Most anglers would ledger the lake, but because I was a bit of a purist and loved to see a float slide away followed by a solid strike, I tended to persevere with the float. 

Another advent of that time came about during the winter time at the lakes. The match fishing catches obviously dived a bit in the colder climate as the shallow water was affected adversely by the cold. The fish tended to have only a couple of hours during the warmest part of the day to carry out their feeding. You had to capitalise at these times if you were to succeed in doing well at these matches. They were made even harder when you were unlucky enough to have the wind in your face. Filling your swim in with loads of ground bait would very quickly kill your swim. This would be the way you would feed normally in the summer when loads of fish were feeding most of the day. Winter was very different and loose fed maggots and casters were the order of the day to get the fish feeding. Catapulting maggots 50 yards out into the wind was impossible and switching to a swim feeder ledger did not help as the continual splashing seemed to spook the fish very quickly out of your swim and into your neighbours. 

The float was better as you could cast past the shoal area and then draw it slowly back over your baited area without too much disturbance. With the wind in your face you would be at a distinct disadvantage. Some bright spark came up with the idea of mixing half a pint of maggots with “Horlicks”, which is a well known bed time drink. I don’t know whether they came up with the idea themselves or if they had the method passed on to them by other anglers. It was the first time I had ever seen it used at the lakes. What the mix did was to bind the maggots together into a reasonable ball which was then catapulted out into the lake.

Depending on the strength of the wind, determined how much of the Horlicks was used to ensure the maggot or caster ball stuck together without disintegrating during the procedure. The beauty of the mixture was that as soon as it came into contact with the water, the bait separated, leaving a little cloud of white on the surface. This worked a treat and the small section of anglers in the know, cleaned up the pools on a few matches before it became common knowledge and appeared in the angling press.