Page 3 - The Lake.

The Lake

An overview of how the lake looks and the swims, some of which have acquired new names. 

The Lake was (and still is) about thirty five acres in size and seeing as we estimate that there were 'around' 150 double figure Carp present in the middle 1980's, then this means there would only be about five per acre. As already touched upon, we received little feedback about the original stocking and seeing as we had little real contact with the hierarchy due to the Committee being a tad above our lowly station let's say with it being a bit golf club like, jolly hockey sticks etc, so this meant we were never able to sort the wheat from the chaff with regards to good or bad information regarding times and numbers of stockings. During the period in question ('79 - '87) there were little bits of new stocking going on. In the very early 1980's a few small grey Italian type mirrors in the 3 - 4 lb range, probably less than 10 fish? were put into the lake and later on from around '83 - '84 time (??) a small section of the lake was netted off in the small narrow gully behind the Baldwin swim into which were introduced some very small, very scaly mirrors of under 1 lb in weight. Eventually these grew and were introduced into the lake and some were already into low double figures by the time I stopped fishing the lake in 1987. I'm not sure as to which strain these fish were? The original stock were mostly of the Italian type, deep grey, two-tone fish, sparsely scaled but there were a few long skinny, heavily scaled at the tail end, Galician types, but no more than a handful or two. Although we noticed spawning going on we never once ever saw or heard of any Carp fry being seen. 

The lake, being a gravel pit extraction, was of various depths, the exact underwater topography of which was often a mystery to us anglers as this was way before the advent of echo sounders and the like. The fact that both boats and swimming were outlawed did little to help or else no doubt we'd have mapped the entire lake out for depths during the close season. It was just impossible to plumb the depths at any more than about eighty or so yards anyway, meaning we were pretty much just left to our imagination initially as to how deep the water was out there where we were casting and what the bottom of the pit was like. In time we developed a technique of casting out a lead and 'feeling' what the bottom was like. On a slow retrieve, using the rod to feel whatever you were dragging over, we did get a sniff of what it was like out there but no more than that. As for the depths, well what we could plumb out told us than in places the water might be 15 feet or more at places along the north east bank (as in 'the deeps') whereas the rest of the lake varied between about two and ten feet in some of the deeper margins. As to some of the other longer range areas where I caught the bulk of my fish, I had no clue as to the depth! I could deduce the bottom by the feel of my drag back system, a smooth rattle indicating gravel or a smooth feel meaning you were over mud or light silt where there were areas of either small amounts or no weed. Weed was always obvious when felt through a thin carbon rod and silt could be smelt on your baits if left out all night. We used to aim at the bars to fish upon but the fish used to feed in the silt as well. In the end we got quite good at finding the wide, often regimented gravel bars on certain swims such as the Ritchies. There, as in other areas of the larger more open bowl of the pit, the gravel bars ran roughly north and south towards and away from you, so then landing on one (and having a quick feel to make certain) wasn't too much of a feat once you had a visual marker on the opposite bank to aim at. We used all sorts of visual markers though never any dedicated marker floats, a tree or a dark patch of earth on the opposite bank that was all we needed, whatever it was where you were aiming for at the time. This was far from being precision fishing. The shallower bars to your right were islands, so this helped you get a more accurate alignment too as you could physically see the angle the bars were originally dug at. Once you cast and hit your marker, you'd just make the lightest of pullbacks, and if smooth, then you'd be happy. It's odd, as I sit here writing all this boring garbage that I can still imagine the feel of a lead dragging along the bottom at 140 yards range. The only other clues we could get were when you saw that your lead was getting dented, meaning you'd been casting on top of the more shallow gravel bars.  Otherwise we were all in the dark, no one had a clue really, not in the early to mid 1980's anyway. As I write this, I've just remembered the work parties when boats went out into the lake to clear old line or bits of windblown branches, bits of trees, the floating corpses of dead match anglers who'd died from boredom etc. At this time you could see whoever was out in the lake at the time putting an oar into the water which gave you some idea as to the depths too, though in reality this did little to help with specific areas of the lake when you were actually fishing. We also obtained some old aerial photos of the pit, I assume taken in the massive drought year of 1976 when the water levels were very low. On these 10 x 8 inch black and white photos you could see all of the bars and the shallower areas. These were prize possessions (no Google earth then kids) back then in the dark ages when we had our own hair, working brains/limbs and flat bellies. All these old memories kicking around in my head, I can still bring them to mind clear as day. 

There were very few swims for such a large lake, the main reason being that the entire south blank (running between the Barnes and the Deeps) was out of bounds. I will go through the swims one by one:

1: The Barnes. Upon entering the Car Park via the drove, there was just one swim on the smallest (west) bank. I'm not sure what it's like now but back then you'd wander along a thin path sided by masses of willow trees and the air was full of mosquitoes, it was marshy and so much so that there were areas where the path was boarded across the wetter areas. The swim was a small, high sided, square mound of earth held in place with boards from where you were looking out across a few shallow bars which formed islands about fifty/sixty yards in the distance. The troughs were quite deep, and the Bars, headed roughly right and left across you, were often very weedy meaning that once a fish was hooked you were inevitably in for tough time. We all ended up having to go into the water to retrieve fish here, something that I hated to be honest as it freaked me out swimming through weed and it was always a nice feeling to make it to the next shallow bar for a rest. I used to like casting through the gap in the islands but obviously this was fraught with danger. I used to fish this part of the lake only during my formative years of Carping, even though it was the place that I caught my first ever twenty pound Carp from in 1981. The swim was named after Dave Barnes (he lived in Cliftonville/Margate if memory serves correct?) the man who made the best bivouacs around at the time. Dave didn't fish the lake too often during my years, but he was a nice enough bloke when our paths did cross. Of course I bought my upgraded bivvy from him, up to then I'd been using a heavy wax cotton thing, which although nice and stable was slightly small for me (I am six feet five) and worst of all it leaked! 

A behind the rods look into the Barnes circa 1980/81? No doubt one of the rods would have been cast through that gap in the islands in line with the right hand rod. 

I noticed on the C&DAA website that there is now another swim on the west bank called the Shed Swim. This wasn't there in my day but I can see from the map that it's slightly closer still to the gap in the Islands that we used to cast through from the Barnes. I would imagine that this renders the Barnes swim pretty much redundant as a viable area for Carp fishing nowadays? I also see that there is a marked area called the Disabled Swim in an area that we always just referred to as the 'Car Park'. No one set up to Carp fish from this swim though I did catch my one and only ever Fordwich floating crust fish from this spot. The Car Park area used to be a good place to look at fish cruising during the late close season and it would be a place to look from on hot days during the season when many fish might be seen on the surface, which is what happened when I caught a 13 lb Common on that bit of crust. 

2: The Trees: The next proper swim wandering east after going through the gate headed east along the north bank. At this end of the lake the bars run more parallel to the bank you are fishing from due to the way the area was dredged for the original gravel extraction. Once you pass the Trees and the adjacent area of island further east to where the lake opens out, the bars run roughly north to south not east to west as they do at the Car Park end. The Trees was made up of three fishing areas, one of which was short range swim then the other two (known as the centre and the right hand Trees) which looked out towards the main islands about 70 yards away? The best way to catch fish here was to fish the middle of the three swims and cast through the largest gap in the islands into the troughs or the back of the main gravel bar. Again this was a nice place to see fish cruising around. The Car Park end being full of scattered Islands, was a big draw to the fish.

The middle trees swim in about 1981.

Gonzo (okay then, Dave Stewart) fishing off the right hand side of the Tree swim in 1980 or 81? Note those Heron bite alarms, no doubt heavily doctored by the lakes master gear tinkerer. Hang on, isn't he wearing red carpet slippers? Now that had slipped my mind.

3: The Ritchies: Why named The Ritchies? Well, I have forgotten and I'll have to ask around to find out as the dudes name given to this area of the lake has slipped my mind. He was an angler from the 1970's not my era. The Ritchies is a great area of the lake which is at it's widest at this point being fully 200+ yards to the far and inaccessible bank. You had the best of both worlds fishing the Ritchies as not only was it not too much of a hike with your mountain of gear but was easy to fish from too. You could lob a bait 80 yards alongside the islands to you right or fish at extreme range. It was my personal favourite area, as not only would fish be drawn in from the opposite side by feeding fish finding mass areas of free bait boilies but it was also a natural spot that fish would move through back and forth through to get in amongst the Islands. It became a bit of a party swim in my era and often was the time there would ten or more people hanging around nattering about this and that. We all had our platoon of 'Mungs' as Geoff referred to them, and being King of the mungs, I had more than most. Of course I was just the most lovable character (hee hee) so they'd all come from far and wide to see uncle Phil. There were pro's and cons with this of course. Eating and sleeping were affected but many was the time you could get one of your Mungs to bring you stuff from the shops so you didn't have to leave the lake. Milk, Bread, Cod and Chips, all sorts were delivered ...

The Ritchies in 1982, showing the entrance to to islands to the right. Also my old cork handled Rod Hutchinson Carp rods. You had two options for these rods, cork or a moulded plastic type thing with a sliding metal reel retainer. I did in time buy a third RH, this one a non cork handled jobby, a second hand purchase off of Fred Brown.

Sheltering from the rain, The Ritchies 1984. That's mine and Geoffs gear, I recognise Geoff's old landing net. 

The Ritchies during the big freeze of February 1987 when a rather silly Lockey and I tried to fish. It was so cold that you couldn't even reel in due to beads of ice which formed immediately the second that you cast out. I think there had been a -17 windchill the previous night and temperatures dropped to over -20 in Kent during this period. Me and Lockey were in the mood to go fishing so we just went fishing. We were tough ... grrr. 

This is what I awoke to one morning in 1986. I have a rough idea we may well have had a small party the night prior? The plastic flowers stuck in the mud near to our rods give away part of the previous nights destination ... the Curry House in Canterbury perhaps?  This was all part of a welcoming due to a visit from Tony 'Fat Guts' Moore whose rods I recognise on the right hand side alongside of mine. 

The Ritchies in the summer of 1987 during yet another flood. There was just enough room for one bivvy and that was on the higher ground at the main path entrance. I'd be forced to fish wearing waders at such times. 

4: The Little Ritchies: The little Ritchies is the area due west of the main Ritchies swim (about twenty odd paces) where you were looking down the gully toward the islands meaning that casting was always very close range. In the middle 1980's some bright spark deduced that when wearing waders that you could walk past the Little Ritchies and out onto the Island which soon after became a bona fide swim of it's own. Thereafter the Little Ritchies was a nonentity, a place to stake out any sacked up fish caught at night from the Ritchies or an area to photograph fish. I didn't fish this area until one night when the gully was seemingly full of fish and my mate who was fishing the spot (Jim Dean) decided to leave the area and go and sleep in his Caravanette in the Car Park for some absurd reason? He wasn't very happy when he returned in the morning to see that I'd bagged a few fish including a cracking mid Twenty from his swim.

5: The Island: As already touched upon, this was new spot unavailable until probably 1985 or 1986? The swim could only be accessed by wading out through 20 - 30 yards of two feet deep water which lead to a rather Edenic private Island where should you so imagine, the outside world didn't actually exist. The fishing being close range plus the added fact that the view was restricted to one small gully of the lake meant that the Island just wasn't my bag. I did fish there for one night (ever) it was early on in the season and although a few fish were present, they were far more interested in spawning than feeding. I did get some spectacular views of many fish, so it was awfully entertaining and it was only the second time that I ever laid eyes on the rarely caught fish we referred to as She Lookalike which was seen chasing other Carp around in the spawning frenzy going on in the margins. One other story from this swim occurred when our mate Chod, a lad from Whitstable who was a rather big lump of human being let's say, slipped and dislocated his knee whilst accessing the Island which was very nasty. As I say swims with no view of the main part of the lake made me feel stir crazy, so I avoided then for the most part. 

6: The Mungs: Alongside the Ritchies, about five paces away, was a small reedy area which originally in the early days of Fordwich wasn't even a swim but was just a small pathway to the next swim along, the Easterns. I remember removing a few bits of vegetation and throwing couple of rods out there one day in the middle of a wait to get the main Ritchies swim, which at the time was occupied. I also had to flatten the vegetation down behind the swim to put up my bivvy, all this took no time. At the time (1984?) no one ever fished there but would fish another swim that became overgrown about fifteen yards further along the bank (the Easterns) but as I say, due to various periods where it wasn't fished, it eventually grew over, it was never re-cut and soon it pretty much disappeared. By 1986 there was man known as Andrew Wilkes. He was part of a long standing array of village idiots going back to the dark ages and beyond. He was voted King of all the Village Idiots whilst representing his chosen constituency of Minster on fourteen separate occasions and went on to become nationally and internationally famous as a top class Village Idiot of some repute. I hear that he no longer fishes but has gone on to became a golfist? See, I told you he was an Idiot didn't I? Anyway, eventually we took pity on the poor beggar, befriended him, took him under out wings and began to love this idiot, much like a smelly old pet. Man could Wilkie drink tea ... wow, it was VERY impressive. He could drink and drink and drink and this just made the rest of us love him more and more. The pile of spent tea bags outside of his bivvy is indelibly impressed on my mind, a veritable mountain of used tea bags, inside which it would have been possible to bury a dead horse. Okay, he bored the pants off of us for the most part but he was nothing if not utterly harmless, meaning we benevolently offered up our esteemed friendship. I make mention of 'Wilkie' as he became known to us, as it was his fault that the Mungs acquired its name. One day in 1986 as Geoff and I fished side by side in the main Ritchies swim, old Wilkie showed up, hacked out a far larger amount of newly grown reeds, making the swim into a place that thereafter became one of the actual proper spots. This is when Geoff so eloquently christened the swim the Mungs, which led to masses of childish laughter from all within earshot. The term 'Mungs' was due to one of our Mungs (as in Wilkie) making it into a place to fish from properly. From this point on, this meant that six rods could be used in the western end of the main bowl part of the central lake seeing as the Easterns was out of bounds and unusable. Henceforth the Mungs was born.

Me netting a fish on the Mungs in 1984/5/86. The swim was so small back then that you were often forced to net your own fish even if there were other people around. Let's face it, there were always people around or else you'd not have fished from this spot, have moved twelve yards to your right and fished the same area of water from the Ritchies.

7: The Easterns: So called as it was fifteen/twenty yards east of the Ritchies, the only area of access to the Easterns. The area has long since overgrown and was unused or unusable from the middle 1980's at least. It was once a nice secluded swim and a place that I often used to head for in my formative years. The area you were fishing was between the Mungs and the Mound, so it was yet another longer range casting area of the lake. The swim easily accommodated a single bivvy and 2 rods and though on occasion during the pre Mungs days we did fish there two up but it was always a bit of a squeeze.

8: The Mound: Now known as Woodmans, it was always the Mound in the 1970's/80's. The original swim was quite large, able to accommodate two anglers/four rods and in the early days was just a mud mound (hence the name) which sloped into the main lake about five yards inside of the trees between the lake and the main path. Eventually it got boarded off at the waters edge and was levelled off, forming a thirty by fifteen feet area of flat mud overlooking the very middle part of the lake. Fishing there was always long range. Since then I see it's been filled in to form a point of land jutting out into the lake with two areas to cast from, or at least that's how it appears on Google Earth? Back in our day you'd have just about have enough swinging room to cast out due a patch of Willow Trees growing behind you.

A few from the Mound taken in the early 1980's. 

9: The Reeds: The Reeds swim is another like the Mound which looks as if a fair bit of work has taken place on it since my days by building the swim out into the main lake. The original swim was tiny and though you could fish there two up with four rods, you'd be forced to share a bivvy as there wasn't room for two. The access off the main path was very marshy and you'd be forced to wander across a few thin loose boards to avoid the stinking mosi filled slimy mud either side. The swim had another problem as being the closest area to the point area, then this meant you could well be fishing the same water as someone totally unaware of you being there due to the swim being totally hidden from view from the points back then. A few arguments were heard to be at raging point when people cast across each other unknowingly. Eventually it became so bad once the lake became overly popular that we avoided fishing the area altogether. It was hellish for mosquitoes there, hellish. To us it was famous as being an area where Al Stewart, who let's just say had downed many a light ale the night before, awoke to see one of his rods in the lake and still disappearing into the distance at a reasonably vast range. If I remember rightly, he went in and even landed the Carp that had towed his gear out there.

Then we come to the four point swims, I say four, it was three proper swims the Baldwin, Killick Point, the Corner Swim and a small grassy area that looked back down towards the Reeds and Mound. I never felt it was so important to fish at long range off the three main Point swims and often caught fish there in the seventy/eighty yards range, easy fishing to those of us who had learned the art of extreme range casting and baiting up.

10: The Balwin: So named after everyone's favourite hoity toity bloke Mr Andy Baldwin. Andy was a bit upper crust, a Trout angler (shudder!) and a member of the dreaded C&DAA committee but was an eminently likeable bloke. Full of old tales, he was one of the older committee members who never looked down his nose at you like you were some sort of foul smell under his nose. Okay, the committee changed (a bit) later on once proper humans such as John Sturge and Joe Fowle were allowed access, but when I first joined it was all a bit stuffy and middle class as I remember it? The lake slightly narrows at this point (though is still 150+ yards wide) and there used to be a tiny island atop a gravel bar in the middle of the swim about 100+ yards offshore. Perhaps it's still there though I can't see it on Google maps? I can see that they've since built a long landing platform sticking into the lake alongside the thin point to the right of the swim. This wasn't there in our day. It was just a flat open swim, able to accommodate two people/four rods at a push.

Looking out off the Baldwin in the winter of probably 1986? The prancing child is Jock's lad, Ben. He's probably about seventy four now ... bah. 

11: The Killick Point: So named due to Rod Killick, who showed up using the first versions of the as yet unknown to us Hair Rig in the early 1980's and absolutely battered the area from this spot good and proper. He had us all scratching our combined heads did Rod? Of course as soon as Carp Fever was released we all joined in with the Carpy fun too. Word about the hair rig got to the Faversham anglers (where Kevin Maddocks and Rod Killick fished) way before it hit the dark backwater that was the Canterbury scene back then. We were light years behind.

The Killick Point, during the winter of '86 I believe.

The Killick Point in August of 1984 after a huge SW gales had destroyed the umbrella spokes inside my bivvy. No matter, I caught loads of Carp during that 24 hour spell. 

The Killick, again during the middle 1980's.

12: The Corner Swim: Even in our day it was occasionally referred to as 'the gap' by newcomer anglers, but to us it was always the Corner swim. I see that now it's been re-named again as the Killick Gap but this is a new one to me? There was another small swim round the back of the Corner swim that faced west with the Reeds swim on the right, but if you did fish there then there was an unwritten rule that it was particle only swim (or at least a close in swim using other baits) so as not to interfere with anyone fishing from the Reeds. I actually fished this swim once but only a post pub night spent waiting for a better spot during a spell where the lake was full up with anglers.

The Corner Swim in the early to middle 80's?

And another of the Corner Swim, earlier than the top one.

13: The Spit: The Spit was an interesting place to fish, in fact one the best spots on the entire lake but I always felt a bit cut off my from my mates when out there. I was always happiest fishing the larger more open swims, so did far less time out there than I ought to have done perhaps? The Spit was only accessible after about 1982? Being just a small thin point on an otherwise inaccessible island up till then, it wasn't until a wooden bridge was built across to the Island just to the north of the Baldwin that there was any swim there at all. The swim itself was tiny, just large enough for a Bivvy and two rods, I'd assume it still is?

14: The Deeps: An area that any of us rarely fished for Carp. It was a bit of a hoick with your gear and you would by then have wandered past so many other good areas to fish from that inevitably you'd just drop in somewhere else even if you'd headed off that way. I did get my first ever Carp (s) from the deeps, also many half decent Pike and one night a huge Eel (taken on a Pike bait at night) which tipped the scales at 4 lb 12 oz. I liked to cast to the shallower water over near the far bank about half way along.

The main Carp swim used in the middle Deeps. Here in the summer of 1987, during a spell of heavy algae, a swim that rather poetically and in an abstract symmetry, I caught my first and last ever Fordwich Carp from  this exact spot. 

The other Lakes on that side of the river are Stour and Trenley Lakes. In our formative years we all fished there for Tench and Bream and latterly Pike too after we got bored with Westbere. We did no Carp fishing here at all until 1987 and even then only Martin Daley and I were foolhardy enough out of our gang to go and give a try. I thought that I had caught all of the big Carp out of Fordwich by this time, so was just about game for anything by then. In the winter of 1982 the centre path which separated the lakes subsided, meaning that after this both lakes were co-joined in the centre even though only by this one small thirty to forty feet wide crevasse. There were always a few Carp in the Stour Lake and as none were stocked fish we assume they were just ex Fordwich fish that had escaped and swam into the lake during times of flooding. Being so close to the river at the bottom of a steep valley in this part of the world meant that the lake flooded quite often. On quite a few occasions over the years you'd be forced to move your bivvy in search of dry ground as the lake's water level rose and rose. One night alone we were forced to move about three times before eventually giving up and heading for home (me and Terry Pethybridge fishing the Trees swim) in which time the lake rose at least a foot, probably even more? There was certainly nowhere we could get close enough to the lake to re-set up on that occasion anyhow. Initially it never crossed our minds that Carp would escape and swim into the other lakes, and once aware of it I know that I used to worry that one or two of the bigger fish might even end up in the river which would have been a nightmare for us at the time. I well remember chatting to the bailiff on duty from the late 1970's till the early 1980's and him telling me that whilst wading along the main path past the Deeps that he'd spooked a fair few Carp swimming in the shallow water, usually terra firma that he was wading through at the time. The most odd occurrence of this came in 1986 when word got to us that the first ever C&DAA thirty pound Carp had at last been caught and we were all shocked to find out it had not come out of Fordwich as we'd anticipated but from Stour Lake. This fish did end up getting caught out of Fordwich in 1987, though whether or not it entered the lake by fair or foul means we never ever found out? There were various scenarios that may well have occurred? One could have been that the fish was netted and put in the proper Carp lake by the committee? They always liked the idea of keeping Fordwich solely for the Carp anglers but Stour and Trenley for the more general course anglers. I however think this is highly unlikely as I think it would be really hard to try and net one specific fish? And even then, how would they ever keep it quiet? I may be wrong but I think that it's far more likely that the Stour Fish was either put straight into Fordwich by whoever caught it or perhaps just swam back into the lake during another period of flooding. I can't remember the name of the bloke who caught the fish at thirty from Stour Lake but we all saw Steve Attwoods photos after he took it from Fordwich, and it was definitely the same grey, relatively un-scaled Carp as the Stour Lake fish.

There was an old Carpy tale from Stour lake which I stumbled across recently. In retrospect the fact that a thirty came out of Stour lake shouldn't have been that much of a surprise as earlier an enormous fish had been caught there before. The tale goes that on 17th June 1985 an angler turned up to do some fishing on Fordwich but found every decent spot was taken. This forced him to look further afield, and he ended up on Stour fishing float fishing for Tench. That day he ended up getting a bite from what ended up being a 29 lb 6 oz mirror Carp. I assume that this was that same Stour Lake thirty? This would have been a record weight Carp for all of the C&DAA waters at the time. The name of the lucky chap was D. Stingemore I read. So we always knew that there were a few Carp in Stour and Trenley lakes. We even fished for them on a couple of occasions when we wanted a bit of peace and quiet away from what became a very busy Fordwich as the years wore on. I even caught one ...

19 lb 9 oz, Stour Lake, August 1987. No doubt a never before caught Carp at the time? I took this fish on the night of the worst Thunderstorm that I've ever been out in. I had two takes on this particular night after we located a few fish is a shallow Bay. They were active, we even heard one jump out after dark. The first take came and I lost the fish, but then I had another, resulting in the above. Soon after an enormous electrical storm moved up the valley and it all got a bit hairy. Now I love a thunder storm, especially at night when the lightening lights up the lake but this was a different matter altogether. The ground was shaking like you'd hardly think credible and you could feel the electricity in the air on your hair it was that bad. I remember Martin trying to cast out at some time of the night, throwing his rod to ground and dashing into his bivvy. He swears blind that his hair was almost standing up on his head and being there at the time I am not in the slightest bit surprised. Anyway, as we sheltered away in our respective bivvy' the storm moved off and we breathed a huge sigh of relief. That storm was more memorable than catching the Carp. 

Modern day drone views.

I found a couple of videos on Tubeface taken over the lake using drones. Some odd things were seen for an old timer. I'd already seen the Google Earth view where it's possible to pick out the new groundwork that's occurred to the Mound, Reed and Points but even then I wasn't quite prepared for what I saw from this drone movie. I have no idea how long the lake has been like this? Anyway, I took a few screenshots ... it's my new most favourite thing ever. 

The view looking west as the drone flew E - W from the Deeps. Those are the Spit and then the points in top right, then swinging left looking all the way down to the west bank. 

Above the new Mound where a lot of new work has taken place. In my day none of that thin point of land even existed and we used to fish from the area pretty much where the bank-side tress hit flush with the lake. It must have taken a lot of work to back fill all that earth into the water there. I also noticed cars and vans along the entrance track. This wasn't allowed at all when I was fishing there. Of course they now call the Mound as 'Woodmans'.

And here we have the Reeds where the same sort of work has taken place as on the Mound. The Reeds was always a tiny area to fish from. 

And what do we have here looking down over the points? A long area with a boat moored up against it and the Baldwin, Killick Point and Corner swim doing nothing to resemble how they were in our day? A Boat on Fordwich? This is just a weird concept to me. The old Corner swim has since been renamed as the Killick Gap. 

The Spit has changed no end.