What with work commitments; a lot of working away / weekends etc and of course keeping my two boys entertained, my time spent on the reel end of my fly rod has been minimal to say the least. Infact in 2007, other than several trips Pike fishing early & late in the year, I think I managed just two fly fishing trips, both of which were to Thorpe Vale Trout Fishery. So by my calculations that makes it over a year since I’ve fished at Toft Newton.

It only feels like a few short years ago that I was there twice a week without fail. At that time you’d be greeted by a great big Alsation named Guiness, and his owner and bailiff Jason Foster. The fishing was always great. A good stock of fish and always a good chance of a 3lb+’er. For whatever reason several years ago Jason left and the fishery slowly suffered. I remember with great fondness in the height of summer Jason would let you fish until an hour after sundown (when he’d signal the all out time with a floodlight), which meant fantastic fun between 10pm and 11pm when out of the blue you’d be covered in caenis and the trout would turn a glass calm lake into a boiling couldron with their frantic evening rise to the anglers curse. Not to say that you’d fill your boots in minutes, far from it, they don’t call these gorgeous little fellas the ‘Anglers Curse’ for nothing. But whatever you did, fish or no fish, it was spectacular fun! Happy Days :0) After Jason left though there was a whole new regime instigated (obviously a money saving exercise) and the boats had to be off the water at 8pm. I never witnessed that kind of late evening action again. Not just that, the whole place and staff seemed to take on a less than positive atitude and as a result it declined in popularity and I should think profitability too. The difference was Jason ran the place as if it was his own. He cared. Everyone ever since has just been staff. Eager to get off home asap and not really giving a toss.

So what with doing a bit of pike fishing recently, and a mate mentioning that Toft was open to course & pike fishing for 3 weekends in January, imagine my surprise when I phoned up toft to book a boat and Jason answered the phone!

We went and had a day. Fishing Toft with a spinner was an opportunity too good to miss! No pike, but 12 1.5lb trout landed was good sport. The coarse anglers had a good catch of trout as well, but even me fat mate Bov could catch a trout or three fishing Toft with maggots! Your chance to coarse fish the reservoir has gone for this year, but fly fishing for trout opens on February 1st.

In short I just wanted to say Welcome Back to Jason Foster, I hope you can get this good fishery great again, and please please please can we have the option to fish that incredible late evening rise once again!!

You can visit the new Toft Newton website (including discussion forum and weather webcam) by clicking here