If you've fished many of the modern commercial fisheries you'll know that some of them have a huge list of permitted baits and methods. The beauty of Willinghurst was always that there were NO BANS. It was barbless hooks but apart from that it was a case of "anything goes". We've fished the place for 20 or more years, it was our favourite venue, the surface fishing was brilliant, you could catch fish in the height of summer and on the hottest of days.
On 16th June 2005 all of that changed. The fishery introduced a ban on floating baits. Nobody knows why, but here's some history. There is a "hut" beside the "New" lake that sells tea, coffee etc plus BAIT such as pellets, sweet corn, groundbait and cat food. I guess that anglers turning up with 50p worth of chum mixers that they'd soaked at home the night before wasn't actually making them a lot of money. The only reason that we've heard for banning floating baits is that a pair of pleasure anglers threw in 10 loaves of bread during a days fishing and that this amount of bread was bad for the health of the lakes. I'd probably agree with that BUT those anglers were fishing right in front of the hut. Rather than approach the anglers and tell them not to be so stupid, the people running the hut just watched and counted the loaves as they were used during the day. It just stinks of an ulterior motive, they wanted to be able to tell the manager of the lakes about this abuse, rather than actually caring for the welfare of the fish. They'd much prefer people to buy method mix, tinned cat food etc., it really looks like the temptation of higher profits has a higher priority than the health and well-being of the fish...How Sad !.
Willinghurst Fishery - R.I.P.
