We were new to continental fishing so really don’t know what to expect nor did we have anything to measure the venue against so this is an unbiased review based on no previous knowledge.
My son chose the venue- mostly because it contained some huge fish.
Once we had the deposit accepted I was given David’s (the owner) phone number. I contacted him numerous times and he was amazingly helpful detailing what we needed and what was on site. He also owned a bait company which is obviously really useful and we used this service a couple of times for maize, hemp and tigers – great quality and were with us the same day.
The site is basic with regards to facilities but we knew this was a drive and survive and not a hot-tub venue that we certainly didn’t want. There is a toilet and a warm shower that were both perfectly adequate for us.
David has a couple of boats dotted around the lake with electric motors that are ultra useful with a couple solar powered charge points to recharge the batteries as required- David also took the batteries away to speed up the charging process when required. My son managed to get his line caught in the propeller one day – No issues David just took it away and gave us another motor and a spanner in case it happened again. These are the little things that truly show what kind of owner you are dealing with – amazing service.
We also hired a bait boat off David as we don’t have one yet. The battery on this was pants so David went out and bought a couple of new lithium ones for us to use – very much above and beyond, top notch service and obviously really useful.
We took the food package- 09:00 and 1800 we got out breakfast and evening meal with pudding. Started with the full English which was great but after 3 days in that heat we were begging for the continental. Evening meal was everything from a Sunday roast to pizza and salad – take my word for it you will not go hungry. All cooked by the owner I believe and was great, nothing we didn’t like but we did get a rather interesting pudding on the first night.
The fishing – the venue is at a size where all disciplines can come into play, boat work, bait boat and ‘old fashioned’ casting. We really enjoy being out in the boat , something we haven’t done before and even landed a couple of the fish from the boat.
Now, we picked a week where the weather was horrific, flat calm, high pressure and temperatures into the upper 30’s, couldn’t really have been any worse for fishing. To make matters worse we had the lake to ourselves and fish had of course done a disappearing act to the far reaches of the lake under the trees in the shade. Took us a while to sort this but we employed the boat to great use chasing them across the lake. The lake isn’t maga easy but it has some amazing and rather huge fish in it. We only scratched the surface due to conditions and relative inexperience but both came away with huge pb’s and fantastic memories.
In a nutshell- amazing lake with everything you need to ‘rough it’ amazing owner (who is always ultra busy but will still find time to chat and help out when required), his son is also knocking about and certainly worth listening to as he fishes the lake and knows it Intimately, with some truly amazing fish.
