Wintle’s World – Peaking Waters

Mark Wintle, an angler for 36 years, is on a quest to discover and bring to you the magic of fishing. Previously heavily involved with match fishing he now fishes for the sheer fun of it. With an open and enquiring mind, each week Mark will bring to you articles on fishing different rivers, different methods and what makes rivers, and occasionally stillwaters, tick. Add to this a mixed bag of articles on catching big fish; tackle design, angling politics and a few surprises.

Are you stuck in a rut fishing the same swim every week? Do you dare to try something different and see a whole new world of angling open up? Yes? Then read Mark Wintle’s regular column.

Peaking Waters

The development of the water

Back in the early seventies my local club had the foresight to develop two new still water fisheries in Dorset. As only one is still available to the club let’s look at its history. The site was ideal; a flat area of boggy ground running alongside a small chalk stream with a gentle slope both sides of the valley. The club constructed one rectangular lake of about an acre and a second more triangular one with a narrow island that is slightly bigger, with a carrier to divert water from the stream to feed the lakes.

Lake 1

The club designated the top lake as a put and take trout lake. Its remoteness meant that poaching wasn’t a problem. The club stocked the bottom lake with carp from Poole Park Lake. This shallow, muddy water has so many carp that it was not unusual for the council to remove some of them to offer to the local club, and most of the fish were around five to six pounds. These fish are nearly all commons of an old strain that usually grow to around twelve to fourteen pounds maximum, and were, at that time, found in a number of lakes in the East Dorset area. This stocking took place circa 1974. The club also stocked quality roach and perch, and planted lilies. The lake is shallow though with depths of four to six feet.

Carp have a habit of spawning soon after introduction, and these were no exception. When I started fishing the lake in the late seventies the carp came in two sizes; pounders and six to seven pounds. Bread was a good bait for the carp, and would also tempt good sized roach, some of which were a pound and a half.

By the early eighties, when I started to fish the water on a regular basis, it was truly an exceptional water. The pound carp had grown to be two pounders (these were a very slow growing strain of carp), the roach were prolific and the perch were both thriving and growing well.

There were random stockings of other species. Tench struggled to make much headway against the prolific carp. Silver bream from a Ringwood pit appeared, probably thought to be bronze bream, and did well for a while, growing to a pound but never breeding. More controversially, someone put in some chub from the Avon.

Superb fishing but very popular

By this time a simple float fished caster over hemp approach was devastating. At a time when commercial fisheries had yet to proliferate, catches that topped forty to sixty pounds were easily attainable. Such a catch might include twenty carp, forty roach and a similar number of perch. Perch topping two pounds started to show especially to a freelined small roach. Initially the chub were around three pounds but later in the decade reached five pounds. Many approaches worked well; simple float fishing with corn, bread and luncheon meat all found favour.

Not surprisingly such good fishing was extremely popular amongst the thousand members. The ‘day shift’ would pack up around four pm in summer to be replaced by the ‘evening shift’ from five onwards. Most of the thirty pegs were fished by two anglers per day, and only in winter did the pressure ease. The club had the sense to alleviate this pressure with a highly successful keepnet ban and enforced use of barbless hooks. Only one match per year was allowed which also helped.

Landing a carp

Fifteen years into the life of the fishery things were looking up. At times it offered brilliant roach fishing, fish over a pound being common with a rare two pounder. The carp had got bigger too but the best ones were only just into double figures. It was the perch that would catch the imagination. Although the majority of big ones were in the two pound bracket for a short period of two or three years much bigger ones came out with the best a record nudging 4-10 (record at the time was 4-13). I found the winter roach fishing challenging at the time; the clear water required fine tactics and cunning feeding but some measure of its productiveness was when the club staged a winter roach-only match. I won it with seventeen pounds of roach to 1-12 – enjoyable fishing. Although the main big perch method continued to be freelined roach, in winter we sometimes located the big perch in a deep corner where we caught them on float fished caster.

The first problem – mud

Around this time the club enlarged the main coarse lake with part of one bank dug out into the slope. It also became evident that although the little chalk brook ran very clear it was also carrying some mud. The club drained down the top lake for mud removal and to transfer some of the coarse fish that had established themselves there. The mud was settling out in the top lake so that little reached the lower lake. The club decided to reduce the flow through the lakes to slow down this process. I suggested that both lakes be drained down and properly de-mudded but there was a reluctance to close the lakes for the year that would be required to do this. Eventually the silting up of the top lake became so bad that it reverted to a coarse lake though it is seldom fished.

Aging carp, perch disease and too many roach

Another problem became evident in the early nineties. The original cap stock were hardly young fish when stocked so twenty years later these fish would have been thirty years old. Most had been caught many times, and one spring the stresses of post spawning took its toll. The majority of the carp died.

The perch were hit by perch disease with very few surviving. The club also decided that the roach had become too prolific and decided to thin them out but somehow this resulted in the roach population collapsing and it has never recovered. The popularity of the water waned. The lilies beds spread to form huge cabbage beds.

A partial recovery until 2000

Within a decade the perch staged a recovery, reaching two pounds before succumbing to disease again circa 2000. Fresh carp stocks were introduced and the replacement of the original stock was complete. The chub, dace and silver bream are all long gone.

The water today

In more recent years there have been further stockings of bronze bream, roach and perch. The water is lightly fished but gives relaxing fishing with carp that are mostly in the five to fifteen pounds range and bream from two to four pounds plus the odd tench. Whether the perch and roach can stage a comeback remains to be seen. The top lake has some carp in it but is rarely fished and is barely half its original depth.

The dynamics of a fishery

The factors that have affected this fishery include siltation, eutrophication, weed growth, failure to reproduce, aging fish populations, perch disease, water extension/dredging, changes to inflow, misunderstood stockings/fish removals, changing interactions between fish populations, over fishing, spawning stress – little wonder that making sense of it all is difficult. And there is no doubt that the dynamics of this small water will continue to change in the coming decades.