Matt Hayes heads for Devon in search of two species that have cast a golden spell on him for more than 15 years...

Very experienced anglers will have one or two waters they'll wax lyrical about. It might be a venue where they caught their first fish, a place where they achieved a landmark capture or water surrounded by great scenery.

I'm lucky to have visited many special places, but among my favourite wild and exotic venues is a commercial fishery in deepest Devon.I'm talking about the Anglers Paradise holiday complex - a regular pilgrimage of mine for more than 15 years.

Paradise was where I caught my first 30lb carp and where I filmed some of my first angling videos, which was obviously a big deal for me at the time. But I was really captivated by two fish species that kept drawing me back. What am I talking about? The fabulous golden tench and golden orfe - the fish that have become trademarks of the fishery.

Planning my trip for this 'Fishing Britain' feature, I realise Anglers Paradise HAD to be on my destination list. Not only is it a special place, not only are its golden fish amazing, but its delights are open to every single one of you. So I loaded the truck, pointed due south and aimed for Paradise.

The pool I focused on for this trip is called the Specimen Tench and Golden Orfe Lake, a 1.5 acre pool that's home to big 'goldies'. Both the golden tench and golden orfe have topped 8lb and there is a good head of back up fish over 5lb. Having fished this lake several times, my main target has been the orfe that swim in its upper layers. I've caught numerous 5lb and 6lb fish with the best just an ounce short of 7lb. Although I've heard anglers be disparaging about orfe, dismissing them as ornamental oddities, the species is simply an ide with colour bred into it. I just don't understand why it is okay to catch the fish if it's silver but not alright when it's golden!

However, what interests me most about orfe isn't their colour. No sir. What I find most beguiling is the challenge they present. You see, orfe, just like ide, spend the vast majority of their life swimming and feeding in the upper layers.

Although you can catch the occasional fish on the bottom, you'll do far better if you master catching them near the surface. This means you need to do two things. First, you need to set up a waggler float designed to fish on-the-drop and present a slowfalling hookbait that tempts the fish with a hookbait slipping past their faces. Second - and this is the key - you've got to get on your feet, be mobile and look for them. Obviously, if the water is clear and the orfe are just under the surface, you'll be able to see them very clearly. They look like huge floating carrots!

But in most lakes, where the water is at least partly coloured and the orfe are a little way below the surface, the signs you're looking for are less vivid. With polarising glasses to cut through the surface glare, you should spy the ghostly outline of the fish moving through the water.

The best description I can think of is that you're chasing golden shadows - you can make out the glowing shape of the fish without being able to see its exact detail. Walking round the lake I soon spotted a few orfe close to the star-shaped island in the middle of the pool.

The fish were holed up inside the small bays created by the arms of the island and they were close to the reeds lining the bank. Unlike some visits to the water, when the orfe have been rampaging all over the lake, these fish didn't look like they were up for a huge feed. Instead of swimming around with a purpose, as if hunting food, these golden shadows were aimlessly drifting about.

I reckon the layabouts were sunbathing! Catching fish in the upper layers of the water is a style used by too few anglers. We've been conditioned to carefully plumbing up before we cast out so we can find the depth and fish accurately on the bottom. But that doesn't mean that laying the hookbait hard on the deck is the right thing to do every time we venture bankside. In warm water conditions many species, not just orfe, spend lots of time mooching about in the mid to upper water layers. In summer, once you know how deep the lake is, it often pays to fish anywhere except the bottom. The detailed diagram (left) shows you the waggler float rig I used at Anglers Paradise. With the water measuring just over 4ft deep, I set my float at half-depth and locked the float with the bulk shot placed at the base of the float.

To ensure my hookbait then mimicked the behaviour of the loosefed maggots, I pinched two number 10 shot on to the line half-way to the hook. I know many anglers find it strange to put shot on the line when fishing on-the-drop. Instead, they don't put any shot on the line, believing the hookbait will then behave most naturally.

While there is some logic to this, the reality is that a rig with no shot down the line just won't behave properly. As the inset diagram shows the water resistance against the sinking line will make it act like a parachute.

When the large bow forms in the sinking line, the hookbait will unnaturally hang in the water. So, far from looking tempting to the fish it will appear very suspicious. By contrast, the two dust shot give the rig just enough weight to cut through the water and ensure the hookbait sinks at a similar speed to the loosefed maggots, fired into the water every minute or so.

Once I'd set up and started to feed it didn't take long to see signs of life - tiny splashes and rings on the surface indicated small orfe were snatching the maggots as they landed. Peering through my polarised glasses I could see shoals of tiny orfe, just an inch or two long, grouped into tight balls on the surface, ready to pounce on anything. This is one of the main problems with maggots - they aren't selective.

Nevertheless, by spraying 3040 maggots every 45 seconds or so, I managed to feed through the tiny fish and spark a steady supply of orfe between 8oz and 1lb. The big fish were being strangely elusive, though. Despite walking round the lake a couple of times to scan the water, the big orfe weren't showing themselves. In a bid to drag them to my swim using sheer weight of bait supply, I stepped up the feed rate and shallowed up a few inches. This had the desired effect and I brought even more fish into my swim and soon had them fighting for my food on the surface.

Although the really big fish stayed away, I did manage to catch a number of quality orfe topped by one weighing around 2lb. It was a fabulous fish with bags of spirit and how any angler can say they wouldn't like to catch a beauty like this is beyond me. By early afternoon I decided to explore another lake that I've not fished much before but which Anglers Paradise owner, Zyg Gregorek, has repeatedly told me to try.

Called The Tench Lake, this really is a product of Zyg's wild imagination - it's the only lake in Britain shaped like a tench! The lake's fish stock is also out of the ordinary. As well as holding plenty of tench, it is also home to thousands of Zyg's home-bred blue orfe. Yep, I did say blue orfe! As I wandered round the lake, looking for signs of life, I hit the jackpot. With the sun high in the sky, the orfe were sheltering under the shade of a tree on the island in the middle of the lake. In the 'dark' water under the branches, hundreds of orfe were milling about with their pale blue colouration making them glow under the water. This was too good to miss and I was soon in place with my on the-drop waggler rig. What followed was one of the most manic afternoon's fishing I've ever had. In just 90 hectic minutes I caught more than 80lb of blue orfe. Fishing in the top 18 inches of water, I'd shallowed up to just the length of the hooklink - 10 inches - within the hour. They were gorgeous fish too, averaging over 1lb and running to over 3lb, beautifully coloured and pristine.

Some of their heads were painted with a deep blue cap and their flanks stained with a pale silvery-blue wash - what a welcome addition to a colourful day's fishing. With well over 100lb of blue and golden orfe having come my way, I decided it was time to try and complete the bizarre hat-trick which makes this place so alluring. I wanted to catch a golden tench.

I've heard some anglers bemoan the commercialism of our sport and fisheries are a common target of their criticism. While I can sometimes see their point of view, commercial enterprise has brought overwhelmingly huge benefits to fishing in the last 20 years.

We've now got a vast number of new stillwaters to visit, many offering superb fishing and facilities a short distance from home. This has encouraged newcomers and lapsed anglers and has given us all some superb fish to catch.

Among the developments are a few beacons that really shine out - Anglers Paradise being one of them. In 1977, Zyg Gregorek and his wife Rose uprooted their family in London and headed for Devon. Zyg had a dream of creating a fishery that offered anglers superb accommodation and fishing on one purpose-built site. At that time, the land he bought was a jungle of dilapidated and overgrown land and it took him more than two years to de-silt, redig and stock his first pool.

By May 1985 he was ready to open Anglers Paradise, offering five villas and one lake for fishermen wanting a peaceful holiday catching good quality fish. But that was just the start of a great journey that's still on ongoing process.

Now, in 2007, the last 22 years have seen 32 more villas and over 30 lakes added to the original site and Zyg's nearby Eldorado and Nirvana fisheries. With almost all the fish on site being bred, born and reared by Zyg himself, it's not just the fishery but also the fish that have stemmed from this human dynamo.

I have had great times at Anglers Paradise and the spectacular fish you see in this feature are testament to Zyg and Rose's determination to create something special out of nothing.

The third species in my technicolour trio is arguably the most spectacular of all. Golden tench are beauties.

In recent years, fisheries have responded to angler demand by stocking these striking fish so they have become more widespread. But Zyg has taken the golden tench concept to a higher level. He's bred some amazing tench - most are a deep golden orange but some also have red spots dotted over their flanks while others have black dots. Unlike the orfe that shoal up and feed high in the water, the tench required a complete change of approach.

Moving back to the Specimen Tench and Golden Orfe Lake, I geared up with a standard running cage feeder rig.

Tench are a species that feed almost entirely on the bottom where they use their telescopic mouths to dig in the silt, mud or gravel to root out tiny bugs and grubs. But there is one more characteristic that almost all tench display - they love fishmeal and pellets.

In the same way that we've discovered just how good these baits are for catching bream, so it has become common knowledge that tench also love a fishmeal diet.

Blending Dynamite Baits' Marine Pellet groundbait (70%) and crushed hemp (30%), I had a mix with a potent fishmeal pong which bubbled on the bottom of the lake as hemp oil burst out of the bait.

This is one of my favourite mixes as it combines an attractive smell and taste with activity to catch their attention. With a drilled 8mm halibut pellet loaded on a hair-rigged hooklink, I had a hookbait that was resistant to small fish. Operation golden tench was ready for take off!

Launching my loaded feeder towards one of the five bays on the lake's central island, I feathered the line pouring off my reel to drop the feeder deep inside the bay alongside some rushes and tiny lilies. Perfect. Tench love searching for water snails and other protein-rich grubs. With the clock ticking towards 6pm, the sun that had bathed Devon in it's glow started to throttle back on the heat. I sensed 'bite time' charging up on the rails, but I knew I'd have to be patient.

Unlike carp, which often respond straight away to the influx of fresh bait, tench are usually more circumspect. They often hang off the bait and circle around a while before getting their heads down. I suspected it would take me an hour to get the fish going. In the event it took me just over 30 minutes to get my first fish, a glorious 4lb-plus golden tench that 'dad' Zyg was on hand to witness.

Once I'd got that first response it was as if the dinner gong had been rung. In the last 90 minutes of a memorable day, I bagged eight goldies and even one of Zyg's newest creations, a blue tench! As the sun sank over Devon and I slowly gathered my gear together to make a fish-weary trudge back to my lodge, I couldn't help but reflect.

Some 15 years after I found Paradise, I was catching the fish that had first drawn me to the place. Although the biggest golden orfe had given me the slip, the blue orfe and technicolour tench more than made up for it. Yet another great day for the memory banks.

Our thanks to 'Improve your Coarse Fishing' magazine.