Kilnsey Stocking Policy FAQ
How often do you re-stock the lakes?
As fisheries go, very often. Generally twice a week in winter and four times a week in summer
How do you keep your rod average so high?
As we stock the lakes regularly, this introduction of ‘fresh fish’ helps keeps a quick turnover of stock and so helps to avoid fish becoming resident and ‘fly-shy’.
When there does become a good number of resident fish we hold a Clear-out event to clear out all the fish from the lakes, then re-stock straight away with fresh fish.
Why are your fish so hard fighting?
Our trout farm is fed with cold spring water, and as fish are ectothermic, they only grow slowly in cold water. This means that our fish grow at a more natural, healthy pace and develop strong muscles. Even our 20lb fish give a great fight, unlike the ‘Jumbo’ trout that you may hear of elsewhere, which are trout that have been fattened too quickly.
Why are there sometimes more brown or blue trout than at other times?
Unlike rainbow trout which are available all year, brown trout are only bred in the UK during their natural winter spawning period, so we only rear one ‘batch’ of brown trout each year. When they reach their target weight of 3 to 5lb, we stock them quite heavily.
Our blue trout are also generally reared in a single batch each year, but although we stock them more heavily during the spring and summer, we do stock them all year round.
How do you manage to keep such a constant range of sizes in your fishery?
As we farm all our own trout, we have a full range of batches of fish at our disposal to re-stock with, and with careful management we can respond and re-stock quickly if, for instance a lot of big fish or blue fish have been taken out.
How do you stock the lakes
We use a pick-up with an aerated fish transport tank on the back, and take our desired number of fish from each of our farm sections. We then off load them into the two lakes. The whole process only takes around half an hour and is fairly stress free for the fish, so they settle and start to feed almost immediately.
