White Springs
   Fishery

On the 21st of February, i headed down to WhiteSprings fishery in south wales. When i got there i decided to set up on the old cabin swim as nobody was fishing there. For the last few weeks, this had been a spot on which i had blanked on. So with the rods cast out and all the gear ready i sat down and drank a cup of tea while the sun rised. Wtih no action, at about 12 o clock i recast a small pva bag filled with mainlines cell boilies on to what seemed to be a real hot spot. 10 minutes later I was battling it out with a small mirror which turned out to be 12lb 7ounces.   I then put both rods out on to the spot and shortly after i had another lively little mirror which weighed 13lb 2 and looked great in its winter colours.    About half an hour later i had an absolute screamer on the left hand rod and, following a spirited fight, i had a new PB Common in the net weighing 18lb 1oz.    One side of the fish looked great but the other was a bit random with the scaling pattern. After returning the fish, i had another take that felt like a big fish but unfortunatly the hooklink snapped but oh well, you cant land them all! I shouldnt have worried though because a few more minutes later, i had an absolutly stunning, fin perfect common of 17lbs exactly on the mat.    After all the action, it went dead for a few hours and then i had one last run as i was packing up. A beautiful mirror carp of 16lb 3oz was on the end and as the light was fadeing i managed to bundle him into the back of the net. 

    After a action packed day at 'Springs' i packed up and went home a very happy boy!

A new weather widget can be seen by scrolling down the page and looking on the right hand side of the page, this will automatically update and will give you all the details you will need to know direct from the met office.

All lakes are currently open and fishable at the time of print. There was small patches of thin ice on some of the lakes this morning however the lakes were fishable. Please ring the fishery if in any doubt or if travelling some distance as each day is different due to the weather

thanks

 
A good days december winters fishing at White springs fishery.

I can remember it well. I went on the old canal to fish for some perch. I started with a ledger rod down the edge to my right, I baited with red maggots,and fished a freshwater prawn on them,and did the same with the other rod,this rod was fishing to my left but with a float. This i fished over depth for lift bites.

It wasn't long before the ledger rods tip started tapping three or four taps and around it went and i was into a nice perch around the 2lb mark,so i put it in the keepnet,within five minutes the float started to slide across and out away from the bank i struck and i was into another nice perch again around the 2lb + so  again this one was in the keepnet.

That was it for the float rod.

I had TWO more good perch after that, they came on three dead,red maggots fished in the same spot. I decided to release the four perch as they had been in the keepnet for a while.So i needed some photos and a witness for one of the best days still-water perch fishing (excluding spinning for them on a nice river) i have ever had.

,The weights of the perch 1lb10oz ,2lb3oz, 2lb7oz. 2lb9oz

 total bag weight 8lb 3oz. 

Beat the recession at White Springs!

 Special offer.

Make a booking in Febuary and get a whopping 30% off accomodation prices for any month during 2010.

We would like to report that all lakes are currently open and fishable, Please ring in advance to make sure that this continues due to the unstable weather but whilst other fisherys are struggling with frozen lakes White Springs remains fishable

Hope to see you all soon.

  The recent weather has shut down nearly every fishery in the country, and although some of the lakes at White Springs have been closed due them freezing over we still have use of the Pleasure Lake and also part of the match lake and are still open for fishing to one and all.

As you can see on the day I took this photo it was pretty full with pegs that were open being very much in demand. There are a few pegs that were available on the canal lake when i was there however the Pit was frozen and also The Specimen Lake was pretty much frozen in most places when I looked and we even had to go out and break the ice to free up lines from fishermen who had woken up the next day to find them frozen into the lake :P. So please ring Vince before making the journey on 01792 885699 to make sure that you can get a place on the lakes and also to make sure the lakes haven't frozen further in the meantime. 

The below picture shows the frozen Specimen Lake however the lakes did show signs of thawing after the sun had come out.

The new 2010 prices have been released and Vince and Eileen are pleased to announce that the Membership prices for the Specimen Lake has been dropped from £75.00 to £50.00 and the Pleasure Lakes has been dropped from £50.00 to £40.00 per year.

The Pit lake prices have been heavily reduced in a futher gesture of goodwill from Vince and will now be at the much lower price of £4.50 Day Ticket for members and £7.50 Adult and £6.50 OAP/Child Day Tickets for non members. Purchasing a membership will allow you to fish at members discounted prices and during the months of Jan and Feb 2010 you can fish at half the price of members discounted rates. This means that you could be fishing as a member during Jan and Feb 2010 on the Pit Lake, Pleasure, Match and Canals for as little as £2.25 a day and the Specimen Lake for £5.00.

This massive price cut has been brought to you by Vince and Eileen of White Springs who would like to wish all their members a Merry Xmas and a happy New Year and tight lnes in 2010 for everyone.

 This photo by Mark was selected to be the Nov Photo Winner 2009 and will receive a free 24 hour pass to fish at White Springs

The below photo is the runner up photo that will receive a free day ticket pass.

White Springs was very proud to be chosen this year as a host for the CarpAnd.Co.uk Social event which is now becoming a very popular event in the angling calander, with anglers from the up and coming fishing website coming from all over the country to try and covet one of the very sought after swims that form part of the social event. With the specimen lake being entirely prebooked by the organisers and closed to day ticket anglers from Thursday evening onwards for the social event, the lucky qualifying participants of the Carp and Co Event started to travel down on the Friday and meet up at White Springs with the other angling members of the site. Even though they may have talked to other members on the site for some time, for some this was the very first time they were actually meeting in person the other members of the site where fishing ideas are explored in depth and help is available to all up and coming anglers.

The event is organised by CarpAnd.Co.uk administration who organise the events up and down the country and this one was organised by SparkyJon along with Dominic Walters. The idea is to pair up the anglers to each of the lakes swims, so that the anglers can come together in a social event, and share fishing tips, try out new things, swap tackle, help each other with their fishing, review fishing equipment and swap fishing storys of the one that got away! and if there is time in this busy schedule maybe even sneak a little fishing in as well. Well you gotta admit they are in the right place for it  as these anglers (and with there being some very experianced names in the mix) fish different lakes all over the country and discuss them on the site and coming together like this allows them to be able to put a face to the name of the people that they talk to regulary across the internet. This year they chose White Springs as their winter venue for their social gathering and meet. 

Most anglers had arrived by late Friday afternoon and set up their bivvys ready for the main event which was being held on Saturday. This was to be a free BBQ held at the new cabin swim that was organised by the fishery owner of White Springs Vince. A marquee was arranged, with staff, food, soft drinks for the youngsters and a few beers for the lads being provided by Vince free of charge, Vince being Vince with his wicked sense of humour  just had to put some duracell batteries for sale signs up to take the mick  there was entertainment with a few of the guys playing the guitar and singing some golden oldies that was a huge sucess and even got Vince dancing! Arrangements had been made so that they guys could watch the Welsh rugby that was on television that afternoon as many of the lads were huge rugby fans after the BBQ finished. Where better to do that but in Wales. The result was a social event that was a huge success and enjoyed by all, and with the rugby being on as well what more can you ask for at a social event.

With the lake being closed, the guys even though they had a busy social event and the rugby on and in fairness had to put up with some torrential rain that poured down over the weekend and suddden cold snaps, still had managed time to organise a mini fishing competition that in reality only consisted of a few hours of the rods being in the water mainly on the few hours available on the Friday after they arrived and a few hours on  Sunday before they packed up. With the winner of the event being young up and coming angler Luke Mainwaring who scooped the pool prize just before it was due to close.

With the extreme weather and the cold experianced at the event, it is a testiment to these anglers that in the very short time the rods were in the water at the infamous Specimen Lake here at White Springs, that any fish came out at all especially under these weather conditions but a few small lumps graced the banks. If you look at the impressive list of PB's of the anglers that attended the event (there will be a photo album of all the attending members by their rods taken on the sunday available shortly with their pbs in the photo details) you can see why it is a very much coveted social event to attend to, just for the wealth of knowledge within the angling industry that these anglers hold and why they managed to even in the short time they fished, managed to pull out a few small lumps here and there.

Speaking to the organisers SparkyJon and Dom they told me that they had enjoyed their time here at White Springs and they would like to thank Vince and White Springs for the hospitality shown. With the organisers already planning the next event due to the huge sucess of this one, they have mentioned that they would like to possibly hold one of the events here again with a view  of there being another one in April, with this one doing something that will help raise money for charity which is a worthy cause in anyones eyes. Events are organised all over the country to be fair to all their members who live futher afield.

We wish the anglers all their sucess in their future endeavours and anyone wanting to attend the next events can contact the forum for more details.

Tight Lines Everyone.

This week I managed to catch up with Vince and he gave me the updates and news from from White Springs.

Its been a good week especially on the pleasure lakes, the new stock seem to have stirred things up, last Sundays match on the old canal was won by a young 13 year old junior Aaron Slyman after arriving for the match late with the anglers drawing his peg for him, he went on to win the match with 78lb 8 oz. In second place was postman Steve Davies with 70lb 4oz.

The pirates also had a mid week match on the match lake with the winning weights coming from Keith Tucson on peg 12 with 113lb 13oz. In second place was Geoff Walker with 61lb 7oz and in third place was Gordon Furlong with 52lb 1 oz which are good weights for this time of year and especially with the cold and changeable weather.

On the pleasure lake carp are still coming out Alex Morris caught 5 nice size carp whilst fishing the night session from out of the cabin.

The New Canal is also producing good weights with bags of 50 - 60 lb being regulary reported.

The Pit and the Speciman lake has slowed up this week for the bigger fish, but plenty of fish up to 20lb are still being caught and after a couple of good weeks on the island the fish seem to have moved away to other parts of the lake this week.

The two photo winners for Octobers White Springs Photo Competition was Lee (Alfy) Calford with his 34lb 9oz PB named Billy The Bear. Lee won a 48hr session ticket courtesty of Vince White Springs site owner for submitting his photo and it coming in first. Second place was awarded to junior Lewis Mcdonald with a very nice 25lb mirror, which also became his new PB he won a day ticket also courtesy of Vince. So well done to those guys for their success both in the competition and also their PB's.

Keep your photos coming in, it is not the biggest or smallest fish it is the quality of photo, the title and any writeup with the photo that makes it a winner.

Also the Carpand.Co.uk Social was held over the weekend and was a resounding suceess with fun being had by all.

With christmas drawing in it has become that time of year for you to start thinking of next years membership, maybe even presuade someone to get it for you as a nice xmas present. Prices for the membership can be viewed from the prices page of the site.

Best Regards Vince

The winner of the October Photo Competition was this picture submitted by Lee (Alfy) Calford, who was fortunate to beat his personal best with this fantastic fish from the Specimen Lake which has been named Billy the Bear by the locals of White Springs and weighed in at 34lb 6oz. Congrats to Lee on this new personal best and for winning the October competition.

A runner up prize was awarded to Lewis Macdonald who also had also beat his personal best with this fantastic looking fish that weighed in at 25lb. Congrats to Lewis for his new personal best and for coming in as the runner up winner in the White Springs Photo Competion.

If you would like to enter the November Photo Competition and have the chance of winning a free 24 fishing pass here at White Springs then please click here and submit a photo today.

http://www.whitespringsfishery.co.uk/apps/photos/album?albumid=7380614 

We have a new section on the site where you can add your own testimonials of your experiances at White Springs. You can view and add your own by clicking

http://www.whitespringsfishery.co.uk/apps/testimonials/

White Springs is proud to announce that you can now chat to all of your friends directly from this site by using the new Meebo Instant Messaging Bar that is at the bottom of your screens.

Basically the chat bar is very similar to the one that you may have used on sites like Facebook and works in very much the same way, this one is a little special for not only can you talk to any of the site members that are here at White Springs when they are online of course or leave a message for them when they are not, but if you create a Meebo account by going to www.meebo.com or by clicking the link in chat box you can then also add your various chat accounts and connect to those networks all through this site.

Connect with all your friends, Meebo lets you access your buddies on all the following networks through this site (Facebook Myspace, Aim Google Talk, Twitter and myYearbook) and others like (MSN Yahoo and many many more via the main site www.meebo.com in a single buddylist, right from your browser here at the White Springs Site, now you gotta admit that is handy. Try it today and start talking to your friends online through the White Springs Meebo interface.

Also we have a test chat room up at present that can be visited here http://www.whitespringsfishery.co.uk/chatroom.htm

and with plans to open the site forum back up for the members it is all happening this week for the members to be able to communicate with each other easier.

Hope you enjoy the new site functionality there is more to come but that is for another day

Tight Lines

Dont forget the specimen lake is full this weekend 6-8th November 2009 with the Carpand.co.uk Social Fishing Get Together.

We look forward to seeing The Crew down in force showing us how it is all done.

Good luck to you all I shall look forward to meeting you all.

TIght Lines Guys. 

Pictured here is Matthew Alderman (13) and Geoff Morris (38) from Llanelli who are enjoying a day fishing on the match lake after being awarded a special one off runner up prize from Vince of White Springs for their photo entry into the Sept Photo Competition. Vince decided to award the runner up prize to the photo after seeing their entry which is pictured below as he thinks that it is especially important to encourage the children to fish as they are the future anglers of tommorrow and Matthew Alderman is certainly proving to be a future angler of today for in the short time that they had been there Matthew had managed to clock up 1 Mirror, 3 Commons all averaging the 3lb mark and also a small bream and a small roach by the time I caught up to them on the Match Lake on Sunday even though the fishing was being reported as slow on every lake due to the sudden cold spell we experianced. Well done Matthew and we hope to see you on the lakes more often.

TIght Lines mate.

Self Employed plasterer Alan Hudson 38 from Ebbw Vale has over 20 years experiance in his trade and is good at what he does, however with anything can come the stresses of life especially in these difficult and troubled times, so his attitude is.........

 "When the work is quiet its time to get the rods out!"

 and the other week he did just that and chose White Springs as the place to fish. Little did he realise that in doing so he would beat his personal Uk best and land a gorgeous 33lb Mirror Carp from White Springs Speciman lake.

Starting his fishing career when he was just a lad of 12 he used to fish locally with his friends using his older brothers rods and other bits and bobs that were handed down over the years. Remembering the years gone by he had huge grin on his face when he was telling me about what they used to get up to and the equipment they used to use such as the old umbrella and a sheet of polythene that used to be their bivvy. Ah those were the days eh?

His foreign personal best for carp is a very respectable 38lb 2oz Mirror Carp which was caught in April 2007 on a fishing trip to France. He remembers that the fish were spawning early due to the warm weather at the time and were all at the other end of the lake and when he drew the pegs at the opposite end of the lake to where the fish were he was gutted as he thought he might blank, but instead he managed to land the 38lb. Not a bad peg draw at all.

 The most exciting fish he ever caught was a 15lb 2oz Pike on the Speci Lake which was caught on a Active8 boily,

"it  was like a little crocodile when I was trying to get the hook out"

 he said laughing and  he said "I would like to catch a catfish after watching my friend pull out a 134lb or 143lb Catfish I forget what weight it was but it was the ugliest fish that I had ever seen but i still wouldnt mind landing one just to see what it would be like."

His Uk Personal Best now is the beautiful 33lb Mirror Carp shown below and he is really stoked to have caught it in one of his most favourite fishing spots here in White Springs. When I asked him what he liked about White Springs so much he said 

 "it's the fish, the scenery, the easy accessibility to the swims, how safe and secure it is, and the fish.......... its the fish here Al, they are absolutely mint m8, you just dont see that on other day tickets fisherys I have been too. They are mint here and thats what I love.."  

So with that in mind lets see the fish that Alan caught and won with.
  

Well he is bang on the money there, it is a mint fish! Caught on the 17th Sept 2009 using Proactive Pineapple bait and a 6 wide gape Esp Raptor t6 hook on one of  his Grey Prodigys in conjunction with a shimano XTE 10,000 Baitrunner and 12lb Diawa Sensor Line he has come a long way from when he first used his brothers rods and used to shelter under that old umbrella. The Mirror he told me gave him a bit of a run and a fight before he landed him on one of the Speciman Lake pegs just opposite the Pit Lake and Alan was bouncing for joy when he weighed it and realised he had just landed his Uk PB. He also fished and landed a lovely 17lb mirror that day that gave him one hell of a fight so between the two fish they really made his day. Alan told me "I never win anything usually only the odd tenner on the lottery so winning the Sept Competition just after landing the 33lb Mirror and getting my new Uk PB it was just the icing on the cake. "

When I asked him if he had any advice for any up and coming fishermen he modestly said that he probably wasnt the best person to ask but told me that he likes to keep his rig a simple straight inline main lead and to "go fishing to enjoy as catching is just a bonus and sometimes you can get lucky and land the big one." Sounds like good advice to me m8.

When I left Alan his mate Grant was cooking up a rather large plate of sausages, Vince was trying to work out how to persuade Grant to part with one and Alan was giving us the thumbs up for his new Uk PB, winning the Sept Competion, choosing a day with gorgeous weather and being able to relax in the sun, soak in and enjoy the scenary and surroundings of White Springs. Personally can't think of anything more lucky than that Alan. Well done Alan for landing his personal best this month and also for winning the Sept Competition and we wish him all the luck in the future. If anyone would like to contact Alan he can be reached on 07747508569.

If you want to try your luck in winning a free 24 hour fishing pass here at White Springs then post your photo up to the Oct Fishing Comp link on the left top of the screen. You never know you could be lucky like Alan.

Tight Lines Mate.

http://www.whitespringsfishery.co.uk/apps/photos/album?albumid=7181092 

White Springs is organising a competition where entrants can upload their fish photos for October Entries above and the best picture and comment of the month every month from now till christmas gets a free 24 fishing session at White Springs courtesy of VInce so thats a total for 4 sessions up fpr grabs!

Competiton Rules Oct

Competition runs from start of month to end of month.

Photos must have been taken inside White Springs Complex.

You may only use a photo once in the competiton, the same photo cannot be used in each month.

Photos must have been taken within the month you are applying for ie Oct photos in Oct.

Dates of picture should be shown on the photo.

Entrants can enter maximum of 10 photos per month.

Family safe photos only.

You must be a member of the site to participate.

Winners will be notified via the site at the beginning of the next month so you must check back regular.

Vinces decision is final.

The competition for Oct is already up and last months winners have been notified so what you waiting for

The Tackle Shop here at White Springs is having a massive stock clearance with many of the rods and reels slashed with an amazing 50% off. A lot of the winter clothing has been massively reduced with some items reduced by as much as 75% and many items must go to make way for alterations that are being done to the tackle shop. As Vince has explained "We simply need the room, so we are practically giving the stock away" And with those sort of prices being offered and bargains galore you can be sure that the stock is going to go fast, so dont delay and get up there today for your bargains.

The Staff at the succesful forum 'Carp and Co' have kindly agreed to donate a dedicated section of their forum to the White Springs Anglers. They have a dedicated team of professional anglers that are happy to answer any of your fishing questions, some very good reviews and some excellent articles.

The White Springs section can be viewed here. and the main forum can be viewed by clicking here Registration link is here so why not pay them a visit and join them today !