Reservoirs

[maxaldo]

Do you not think that reservoirs are the worst places to fish? i'm not sure why but its my least favourite sort of venue

[Dick Dastardly]

A bit of a sweeping statememnt that Max! Depends on the type of reservoir and more importantly which one.Most reservoirs have a very high water quality and so produce some excellent fish.

 

Tell us more about the one you fished that put you off them.

[jeepster]

Reservoirs can be hard to fish, doesn't mean it's not worth the effort...........

[dr bacardi]

caught a lot of perch on my local reservoir,mind you it was a long time ago when i was a lad and my dad used to take us

[maxaldo]

A bit of a sweeping statememnt that Max! Depends on the type of reservoir and more importantly which one.Most reservoirs have a very high water quality and so produce some excellent fish.

 

Tell us more about the one you fished that put you off them.

 

well its big and you'd have to fish it with a ledger or feeder to get to the deeper water in order to get to even the shediest fish, all i seem to see come out of most of them in my area are small roach and perch and the odd pike or bream, bream come in like wet bags and you would have to predator fish in order to get the pike, which are tactics i have not been able to use to great standards of yet , i cant see much chance of getting tench or carp as there are no margins as the gradient of the sides is too slow to incline and there seem to be no features such as lillies or overhangs.

 

I would like to try one near me called the wayo, however i dont have much trust in these sorts of waters, they are very large and look hard to fish. To me they look very desolate and devoid of life a lot of the time. I am interested in giving them a go so i wouldn't mind you quashing the remarks i have made, i am more curious as to whether they are worth giving a go

[smalltincup]

The best way to fish a res is to break it up in to small bits and work your way around the res. If you try and fish the whole thing as a whole then it is very difficult.

 

Pick a section and get the feature finder rod out and spend a few hours finding out whats down there, once you know that, fishing it becomes easier, you can target spots that are more likely to hold fish.

 

Thats what i have done, then as i fish the method for 99% of my fishing i make you a nice method mix and get stuck in.

 

STC

[Dick Dastardly]

The sheer size and aparent bareness of ressies can be off putting.Size wise try to break the water down into smaller areas and fish these as you would similar sized waters youve caught on.

 

The deepest areas on most res's are off the damn wall and these are not normally the most productive.The shallower areas (normally at the opposite end to the dam or up any side creeks) are the better places to start.

 

A lot of res's have quite low stocking densities so location is of even more importance than other waters.

 

Not knowing the water or even type of reservoir it is I can only give you very general advice.But as I said in my first reply they often contain very big fish so are well worth while the effoert required to locate them.

 

Do you see others fishing it more sucsessfully than your self or do they struggle to? What specvies do you know are definately in there? What type of reservoir is it ie small irrigation one on a farmers land,a cannal "top up" res,a trout water etc etc? Are the banks natural other than the damn or is it a "concrete bowl"? More info you can give the better people can try and help.

[Steve Walker]

When I was a teenager, I lived in Greater Manchester. There were a number of water supply reservoirs, shown below. The big ones on the right have no public access, but you can (could?) fish the bottom ones. I had similar views to Maxaldo. They were big, featureless, gin-clear, often full of weed, and just plain hard. I caught a few rainbow trout, when they stocked them in the closed season and allowed any method fishing, and a few pike on lures, but mostly my friends and I blanked. Our experience was with small, shallow waters, ponds, canals and boating lakes, and our tactics just didn't work. There were (probably still are) specimen fish in them, and people who knew how to fish them did well, but we soon gave up on them.

 

Then I joined a club which held the private fishing rights on one of the small cut-off arms. That little bit of reservoir was deep, sloped steeply and was often clear, but it was also one of the best waters I've ever been a member of. Tench, bream, carp, chub, roach, perch, absolutely brilliant fishing. I never did try the big public reservoirs again, but I reckon I probably learnt enough about fishing that kind of water (in an easier environment) that I could have done OK. The techniques have certainly come in handy fishing some deep waters since; feeder, yes, but also sliding float, pole, and the possibility of catching fish at all levels of the water. We used to catch a lot of fish just under the surface, even over very deep water. I once caught a decent bream on a floating dog biscuit meant for carp.

 

So I think they can be excellent waters, you just have to learn to fish them. It's harder to learn quickly on a hard water, though, which I think is the problem; if you're not going to get many bites when you're doing it right, it's hard to know when you're doing it wrong.

 

[Andy Macfarlane]

Try looking at the mechanics of a reservoir and understand why they're deigned the way they are. Once you have, you can apply this knowledge to many other, often unknown reservoirs and increase the likelihood of locating fish.

[Dick Dastardly]

Good post Steve.Your photo also shows how much reservoirs can vary.The concrete bowl type shown on the right can be very difficult but as for example Farmoor shows still produce some massive fish.