Is there anybody on here that used to fish Anglers Country Park? I'm just interested in thoughts about it when it was a fishery and the councils decision to close it.

I think the water had the potential to be one of the best stillwater fisheries in the north if it had been run properly but unfortunatly the council were more bothered about using anglers money to pay for the birdwatchers who used the facilities for free. The fly life in the water is staggering, I can remember huge hatches of buzzer, damsel and summer evenings were dominated by sedge and the fish grew on really well and provided great sport even during the hottest days of summer.

Like I say I'm just inerested if anybody else on here has any memories of this once great trout lake?

Cheers

Mat

I fished this water quite a lot in the late summer of 1994, just after I returned from South Africa and before moving to Warwick.

Unfortunately, being a Labour run council in the area, trout fishing in this water was bound to be eventually put down. But like you have said, the fishing was tremendous for a few sweet months. The hatches of midges were prolific.

This lake was formed by flooding an old open cast mine working.

One day, now we have a new government in the area, someone might looking at resurrecting this wonderful water as a trout fishery.

It also contained some huge perch.

I fished it for a years in the mid to late 90's, think it closed in about 1998 and the fishing certainly was tremendous.

I enquired to Wakefield council some time ago about the possibility of them reopening it for anglers, and the response I got was that after a warden was attacked by poachers, they will not reopen on safety grounds. I fished it virtually every week and I can never remember such an incident. What I do recall is that the guy who was managing it, leased it from the council at some ridiculous rate and eventually he simply couldn't afford it.

I'm sure that if it was run as a proper trout fishery, they could make more money than simply letting twitchers look at the birds as they do now.

I never saw any perch but did see the odd pike.

Mat