Morning all,

I was looking for some advice on how to go about tackling reservoir style lakes for coarse fish. I am thinking about fishing Whittle Dene Fisheries up in Northumberland for coarse fish on the fly. I have never fished for coarse species before and am seeking any advice possible before venturing out. The fishery as far as I know is basically a series of 7 lakes of which 4 are fishable. The lakes themselves look very rectangular in shape, the ones I have seen in passing anyway, i.e. no bays or inlets or points etc (could be wrong on the lower lakes that I have not seen though).

The lakes according to the website are mainly wild species such as Roach, Perch, Dace and Gudgeon and also have skimmer bream introduced in 2005.

Questions:

a) is it worth tackling this fishery on the fly with the species stocked?
b) how would I approach fishing this type of water? Would I be best on a roving approach trying to find shoals? The only features I know of are the little waterfall/ dam inlets from the other lakes, not aware of any other visible features unfortunately.
c) Not sure how deep these lakes are, am I best to stick with a floating line and fish a team of nymphs / wets / spiders or at this time of year do I need to maybe think of using a sinking / intermediate line to get flies close to the bottom?
d) is there any other advice anyone could offer me for targeting these fish on the fly or fishing this type of water, fairly large in size (not a puddle basically)

If I think of any more questions I will add them later but for now that is all

Many thanks in advance for all (or should I say any ) replies.

Gary

All those fish will take flies..yes, even gudgeon

Get there early in the morning an you may see the Roach "finning" and the Bream rolling..thats a good starting point.

Roach are suckers for buzzers.

Perch are suckers for fritz type flies and lures...red head and white body being good.

Bream will take lures, the Polystickle having caught hundreds of Bream on Rutland etc.

Everything will take bloodworm patterns.

Roach and Dace can be taken on small dry flies!

Weedbeds will always hold coarse fish, as will drop offs.

Fish into the wind.

Try a team of buzzers with a weighted one on the point...should give you an idea of where the shoals are...if they are taking the point fly, switch to a sinking line, middle fly and intermediate, top fly a floating line and just fish "normal" buzzers.

I use a 3 weight for Roach etc, a 5 weight for Perch to cope with small lures.

Can't really think of much else....

Hope that helps a little.