The Mere

It goes without saying that most Carp anglers will most certainly of heard the stories around The Mere and the Famous Black Mirror. Anglers such as Dave Lane, Terry Hearn and the first person to capture The Black Mirror and put it on the radar Jason Hayward. Jason first caught The Black Mirror at 46lb which back then was 5lb 8oz short of the British record and this all happened in 1992. As a result of this capture Jason went on to win the Cobra Cup which was awarded for the capture of those ' Unknown Monsters'.

The Mere was 40 acres which held roughly 20 Carp ( True numbers of stocking are unknown )

From the research I have gathered and reading many books from anglers who have fished this

place this is the estimated stocking:

4 Mirrors

The Black Mirror ( Pictured right with Dave Lane & Below with Terry Hearn )

Linear Mirror – around the 40lb mark

Half Linear – Phil Thomson had Caught

Dumpy Mirror

The rest were Commons

The King of the Commons estimated to be around the 45lb mark but sadly it evaded capture and was never caught.

Very dark Commons

Very few Golden looking Commons

Before I go any more into this I should probably mention fishing on The Mere was strictly banned, Very few anglers had permission to fish here. If permission was granted to fish then it was a strictly NO publicity what so ever! Unfortunately greed took over and these Anglers publicised their captures. As a result of this Fishing was banned completely and permission was not granted again.

The Mere was a 'SSSI' ( Special Site Of Scientific Interest ) which was not active in 1993, yet I can't confirm a year where the SSSI did become active. This led many people to believe this is why fishing was banned, That was not the case, It became an SSSI because Alan Tomkins wanted to stop the water becoming backfilled and in the hopes of making a syndicate in the future.. the reason it was banned was for the protection of certain rare birds.

With The Mere comes many, many different stories with many different versions, What I have decided to do is link you to a page where Alan Tomkins ( A Bailiff at There Mere ) Goes into some detail on what happened, why it happened and mostly he clears up some of the mystery stories regarding himself. (Click Here for more Info)

The Mere had no 'pegs/swims' One of the banks was named 'Murder Mile' 99% of the mere was Brambles and nettles that was taller than you and I. So navigating around The Mere was a very challenging task. On another bank believe it or not was a public footpath later to be named 'The High Bank' It's not a public footpath like you think, the access is still next to impossible with fallen trees etc

The Mere sadly ended in a very bad way, Algae blooms lowers oxygen levels in the lake which fish can survive that but if an electrical storm soon follows the storm can kill the Algae almost instantly and as the Algae bloom dies it sucks every last drop of oxygen out of the water which in turn suffocates the fish. Every living creature in the lake sadly died from big Tench, Huge Eels The Black Mirror, Remember earlier in the post I mentioned The King of all Commons which was never caught?, this was around the 60lb mark when the lake perished. Every fish was sadly Found floating on the surface. This was a natural occurrence and unfortunately as The Mere suffered often from heavy Algae blooms and there was nothing anyone could do.

Many many great Articles have being written about The Mere, It's such a mysterious place that I find myself reading something to do with the Mere almost daily. I highly recommend the following for those who have an interest in learning more about this mysterious Mere.