The Traditional Fisherman's Forum

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Sounds good FB. :thumb:

Mark wrote:Sounds good FB. :thumb:

I'll set to work!

Hexton Manor is just up the road from me and I've been there a few times. If anyone wanted to have a look, they have a fete in the summer, when you can walk around the lake. The one on the satellite picture (next to the house) is actually very shallow and weedy and I wound't have thought would be much good for fishing. Interestingly, that little island in the middle has a dining table and chairs on it (the island isn't much bigger than the table!) and, presumably, the owners take a boat out there in the summer. Very quirky!

A much more likely candidate for the carpy bit is the 'stretch' to the north east, adjacent to Mill Lane, where the dam is. I'm ashamed to say I've never had the guts to climb up and have a look (there is a pair of cottages there) but I have seen cars parked there and assumed that they belonged to anglers. Also, I remember an article in Waterlog where someone had obtained permission.

And (sorry to ramble) are we absolutely sure that this is Temple Pool? Presumably we're not talking about the one in Passion for Angling?

Julian W wrote:Hexton Manor is just up the road from me and I've been there a few times. If anyone wanted to have a look, they have a fete in the summer, when you can walk around the lake. The one on the satellite picture (next to the house) is actually very shallow and weedy and I wound't have thought would be much good for fishing. Interestingly, that little island in the middle has a dining table and chairs on it (the island isn't much bigger than the table!) and, presumably, the owners take a boat out there in the summer. Very quirky!

A much more likely candidate for the carpy bit is the 'stretch' to the north east, adjacent to Mill Lane, where the dam is. I'm ashamed to say I've never had the guts to climb up and have a look (there is a pair of cottages there) but I have seen cars parked there and assumed that they belonged to anglers. Also, I remember an article in Waterlog where someone had obtained permission.

And (sorry to ramble) are we absolutely sure that this is Temple Pool? Presumably we're not talking about the one in Passion for Angling?

The temple pool in APFA is quite different and is near Beaconsfield.

Ahhh...I might try and get permission for HM. I know someone who knows someone etc, etc.

That would be very interesting! :D
I gained no reply to my enquiry...

How rude. I'm going to go and have a sneaky look first. May even take some pictures.

I think the idea of anglers may have put them off...

I was very interested to see this thread on The Temple Pool as it was a fishery at which I spent a lot of time in the 1960s. In those days, the fishing was controlled by Lady Kathleen Ashley-Cooper who gave me an open permit in 1961. Of course I had heard about Pickle Barrel, indeed, Dick Walker and I had spoken about the fish on a number of occasions, but by the time I began to fish there, there was no sign of that fish, or any others of a comparable size. However, there was a good number of doubles in the water and as it was only a few minutes from my home in Luton, it was a water of great interest to me.

Personally, I found it to be a fairly difficult water, the carp were not easily fooled and things were difficult when a fish was hooked. The whole of the lake was choked by a fine silk weed that grew from the bottom to the surface. Any hooked fish ran through the weed and before long there would be twenty or thirty pounds of the stuff wrapped around the line above the fish. I found that stalking the carp was more productive than sitting with a bait on the bottom. Perhaps I should have dragged swims, but even if I had, it would have made no difference once a fish was hooked because the fish would have been so close to the weed, it would have been into it in a matter of seconds.

The pool is the lower of the two on the estate and it was always rumoured that the upper lake had been stocked as a trout fishery but I never been able to confirm that one way or the other. Certainly there were trout in the area and I caught some in the little stream that runs from the bottom end of the pool. While they weren't huge trout, those I caught were all close to two pounds, but I was careful to take only one each year. I don't suppose I was supposed to fish there but the stream ran through a farmer's field, so I felt that it was outside of the estate its self. Not only were they tasty trout they were very crafty fish and approaching them had to be done by crawling along on my stomach. There was no finesse in my tackle; it was a matter of hooking a fish, holding it, lifting it out, banging it on the head and taking it home for dinner.

The banks of the pool were/are( ?) heavily treed and the bottom of the pool is covered by dead leaves, which, I believe, may be responsible for the black spot the roach carried. I never caught anything special in the way of roach there, but I did have some enjoyable sessions with them.

Them biggest carp I caught there was one of eleven pounds and I caught that during my work lunch hour. I could get to the pool in fifteen minutes and so I could get in thirty minutes of stalking carp. I hooked a number much bigger than that but the weed problem was just about insurmountable.

The Temple Pool is the spookiest water I have ever fished, even during the day it could look somewhat foreboding, but I decided to try night fishing it on my own one night. I was there in plenty of time and got settled in and hoped that the heavy tackle I had chosen would overcome the weed problem. However, a little after dark I began to feel nervous and then the noises began. I had never heard so many unidentifiable noises before or since and some of them were very close to me. I became increasingly disturbed until I finally broke, dismantled my gear, shoved it in to bags and actually ran to my car! A couple of weeks later I told Alan Brown of Hitchin that I had gone to night fish the water and he said, "I bet you never stayed all night."

In the late '60s, Lady Kathleen handed full control of the estate to her son and I wrote to him, (enclosing an sae) asking if he would allow my permit to continue but I never received a reply.
Losing the right to fish there wasn't a great loss really, I wasn't short of good waters to fish, but it was a water that had its own magic and even the constant thumping of the ram pump had its own friendly character.

I left the UK in the '70s to come and live in Australia and some years ago I heard that all of the carp on the pool had died. I have never been able to ascertain what killed them or what they died of, but I presume that what I heard of them dying was probably true.

I returned to the UK for a holiday in 2004 and decided to take a run into Hexton to have a look at the pool. I walked up the bank opposite the cottage on the left hand side of the road and found myself facing a notice forbidding me to go further. I ignored it and crept to the water side and after a few moments I saw a faint shape pass in front of me. I soon saw others but I was not able to identify the species. I would say that a syndicate now controls the water, or perhaps Lady Kathleen's son decided to make a trout fishery of the lake, that could explain the demise of the carp.

Whatever, the Temple Pool is a wonderful part of angling history in England, and I feel privileged to have been able to fish it as much as I did.