Excellent! I have just taken up fishing and was from the East end.
Suprisingly there is a lot of places in the east end. The first thing would be go to anywhere in epping forest as it is all free to fish now, i was told.
My Uncle used to fish over Wanstead flats. I know it has been drying up and so on, but it has now been re-opened. I am not exactly sure though that there are any fish in there.
Then you have Hollow Ponds which is just at the top of Lea Bridge Road. Some people call it the boating lake. There has been some big Carp caught in there and Pike, however, the ranger told me they had taken all the pike out. This Lake is just over the road from Whipps Cross hospital.
Just a couple of steps away from Hollow Ponds there is a Pond called the Eagle pond. Never fished it, but my uncle did years ago and he saw a few big fish being caught in there. I don;t know what state it is in now, but if you are over the Boating lake, then you can give it a go.
Another great place to fish is in wanstead park. which is down the road From the boating lake (a bit of a walk). You are best getting directions as i can;t really remember how to get there as i went by bus. I do know it is off the road where Tesco's in leytonstone is though. you should be able to find it. That has a lot of lakes, however the first two are not allowed to be fished. (i heard they are putting big fish in there from around epping forest and selling them to private lakes. Not sure how true that is though.
The two that are fishable is the Ornamentals, where a bloke i was talking to said he could see the carp swimming about feeding, he hadn;t fished for a number of years and went home to get his rod.
The other one there is the Perch Pond. everyone i spoke to hadn't been there for years and hadn't caught anything there yet, but i was told a lot of pike i think were put in there, again, not sure how true that is. I have not caught anything in there. Over the ornamentals there is another small river. I am nots sure where it was, but we couldn;t see any no fishing signs there. We ended up pulling out around 30 roach. My brother went back and caught another 30.
Then you have the canal on the River lea which is down Lea bridge road, which i don't know too much about.
In Hollow Ponds there are a lot of different species of fish. Carp, Perch, Tench, eel, Bream some pike and roach. Although i have not caught out of there, i love it. The only thing to watch out for is the boats. They try and go round the shallowest areas and most don;t are aif you are fishing and will just carry on the way they are going. However at the front a place is supposed to have been cordoned off but they knocked down the barrier and still go through.
you may be best going Early morning, weekdays or around 6pm, but there is no night fishing there.
If you want more areas, you could use the Online fishery.
Hope this is of some help and sorry for such a long post.
<small>[ 24. July 2003, 11:30 AM: Message edited by: Craig1 ]</small>
