Today, Brian and I visited Thornhills Fishery in Goostry, Cheshire, which is one of several immaculately maintained waters on the Bay Malton membership card. It’s a water we’ve fished several times over the past couple of years and is usually a safe bet to catch a good number of carp. Today, however, that didn’t prove to be the case. As this is the first time we’ve mentioned the venue on Baiting The Swim, I’ll give you a summary of the water, before getting into today’s events in more detail.
Thornhills Fishery
Thornhills is a a stunning little pool that is loosely shaped like a horseshoe. One side features a natural island, while the other has several artificial islands created using large sunken tyres. The depth is approx. 3-4ft in most places, although the water level is affected by the water table and can become very shallow in the summer.
The main species to be caught at Thornhills are small common and mirror carp weighing 2-8lb, with the odd double-figure fish making an appearance. We’ve also caught a few small tench, and there is a good head of roach and rudd to keep you busy if you choose.
Most methods seem to work on Thornhills. I normally use the pole to fish up to a feature, or a hybrid method feeder, whilst Brian has had some good sport on a small waggler or a cage feeder and hair-rigged meat or corn.
It’s also worth mentioning that the nearby Goostry Home and Leisure offers a stunning breakfast that we normally partake in. With today being a bank holiday, we skipped our usual Thornhils breakfast. Maybe that’s where things started to go wrong.
How Today Went
With the new daylight saving time pushing sunrise back by an hour, we decided to set off a bit later than we normally would. Coupled with some road closures slowing us down and a trip to McDonalds for Breakfast and Asda for a meal deal, it was approaching 9 am when we finally arrived at Thornhills. Unfortunately, there were two anglers on the pegs we planned to fish, so we set our gear up on two pegs facing the natural island.

The best approach for my peg would normally be to fish three pole lines. One up against the island with a hard pellet or some corn, a second shorter line about halfway across, and a third down the edge. I decided on this occasion to use a hybrid method feeder as there were a few hours of rain scheduled to arrive, and I didn’t fancy using the pole at 13m under a brolly.
Brian was fishing on the peg immediately to my left. Unfortunately, he couldn’t get close to the island due to large snags. His approach for the day was to fish meat over pellets on a small waggler in some open water in front of him and a second line in his margin.
Both of our chosen methods have proven to be successful for us on Thornills in the past. When Brian’s float disappeared landing him a 3lb common on his second cast, we thought we would be in for a good day. As I mentioned earlier, that didn’t materialise.
By the time noon rolled around, the bad weather had set in and the brollies were up. Brian was still sitting on the one common, and I only had a couple of small roach to my name caught on a 5mm meat-flavoured wafter. By this time, there were six of us fishing, and we were all struggling to get regular bites.
At 1 pm, I got my first decent bite completely out of the blue. After landing two roach I upped the hook bait and swapped between 6mm and 8mm wafters. The bite came using an 8mm Scopex wafter and I was thankful to land a small common of my own. Brian followed up not long after with his second common, and we began to hope that things were waking up.


We both missed some bites here and there, but they were much slower than we are used to on Thornhills. The annoying thing for me was that there didn’t seem to be a pattern emerging to show what was bringing about the bites. After more changes, my next bite finally arrived at around 3 pm using an 8mm Salted Caramel wafter and some Teddy Fisher Excite crushed pellet groundbait instead of micros around the feeder. The result was a small but immaculate mirror carp of about 2.5lb.
Eventually, at around 5 pm, the rain relented and the sun started to warm things up. With the brollies packed away, I had a small run of bites coming during an hour-long spell which resulted in three more small carp.

With the sky looking moody and the temperature dropping quickly, we decided to wrap things up at 7 o’clock with only seven carp and two roach between us. It certainly wasn’t the result we had hoped to share for our first blog, but that’s fishing for you.
Do I think we could have done better? Whilst the pool was fishing uncharacteristically hard, there are some things we could have done differently. Using the pole would have almost certainly given us both a better chance, especially myself in getting close to the island accurately. We could also have brought more bait options with us to add some variety, but we went with a simplistic approach to try and target the bigger carp based on our previous trips to Thornhills.
Disappointed? Yes. Did we enjoy it regardless? Absolutely. We always have a good laugh together regardless of how the day is going. Next week we’re heading off to Border Fisheries, so should hopefully have a happier update to share.