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 New Posts  Wintons fishery France .. is it a scam ?
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vossy1
Posts: 7407
vossy1
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   Old Thread  #2 11 Oct 2025 at 0.47am  0  Login    Register
I'm locking this thread as you've posted the same post in the other Wintons thread running at the same time, keeps the info in the same place, easier for others to find
B1GCON
Posts: 2
   Old Thread  #1 11 Oct 2025 at 0.16am  0  Login    Register
Wintons fishery France…is it a scam?

Do not waste your time and money on this lake! This is going to be a long post, but I want to be thorough.

We (6 anglers) arrived Saturday 4th October I must say on first impressions the lake looked great. The exterior was nice, clean toilets etc.

However, upon walking around we noticed the water level had dropped a considerable amount from a post in may found on instagram.
it looked like the water level was 2-3 foot lower that what it should be. It so was so low, the rods had to be set up on the waters edge rather than up high on the swim.

We sat down with Roley to pick our swims and go over the rules. At that point I had asked if it was possible to cycle round in the evening and collect my dinner and cycle back (as I had the food package) to maximise the time my lines are in the water. He looked at me like I was mental and said “I’ve never heard that in 8 years”. This is something I have done at every lake i go to and I’m sure there are many other anglers that do the same thing.

Now to the fishing, when we asked Roley what the previous week catch report was he said “fish come out”. no information of sizes or locations which felt strange to all of us.

One of our anglers managed to catch a 25lb mirror on the first night and we thought great! Great start. From that moment on it went silent. not even a single beep of a bite on 18 lines between 6 of us.
no signs of fish. No fizzing. No bubbles. not one cruising around in the sunlight.

By day 3, we all became a bit suspicious. So, we asked Roley again how many fish was caught the week before. You know, trying to get some more info from the man that owns the lake.
He said “I think 8 or 9”.
Now if I was an owner of a lake I’d know how many fish, what weights they were and where they were caught from! Surely there would be more passion but we felt like that was a complete lack of interest.

To be honest, we should have known as prior to our visit we had this absurd response below.
we asked for catch reports via email as we searched the net high and low and NOTHING. Not a single catch report. The most recent post on their instagram (September 12) was actually made 2 years prior!

Roley’s response was “I stopped doing catch reports a long time ago, as in my opinion it doesn’t really reflect how the lake is fishing.” “ If I have some anglers that try hard and then some that are lazy and here for a social, the catch reports don’t show this?”
What a load of rubbish. Whether some people may be more social than others, the entire point people pack up from the UK and head all those miles to France, Is to fish.

Sick of the lack of information, all wondering what the hell we’re doing here, I done some digging across multiple pages and the only people I found that had attended wintons asked the same question, “any tips for wintons?”. I got in contact.

One man responded and told me when he arrived, there was a dead fish in the lake.
When he approached Roley about it, in his own words “he couldn’t look me in the eyes”. This particular man fished in a group of 6 and again they caught only 1 fish, 9lb. No bites the rest of the week.
A second group of friends of this man went to wintons after him and again…. No fish.

Another group that fished this year in may recorded that one fish was even caught twice!

There were conversations had about this lake being part of a syndicate owned by a few men and they parted ways at some point.
The website and social media for wintons states “under new management” despite Roley being the “new” owner for 8 years.


Something doesn’t make sense. The lack of any information. Lack of catch reports. The lack of fish. The only recommendations for the lake are personal friends of his. But according to the website, the lake started with 400 fish, with more being added….

If you decide to go ahead after reading this, well I wish you the best of luck!
oh and take your own food.
Do not waste your money on the £150 food package, which includes microwave meals and Lidl multipack trifle desserts or tinned fruit.
Because more importantly, if your group decides to leave early when they don’t see anything living in the lake, and you’re left on your own with the food package, he refuses to provide any food for you!
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