Twin Lakes Croston

I first visited Twin Lakes at Croston with my dad about 20 years ago when it was a purely fly only trout venue. Since then its become a mixed fishery, with the north lake having a great head of roach.

I’ve been back a few times over the years with my most recent visit being earlier this year on a cold and windy spring morning with Phil K, Wokkie, Dave and Baz. We all caught roach during that session, but nothing over 6oz.

I’ve always been sure, that there are some real lunkers in there as the only predators in the lake are trout and perch. Once the roach reach about 4oz their only predators are fish eating birds.

So yesterday morning, I arrived in Croston, to be greeted with lovely early morning sunshine, and a light southerly breeze – perfect autumnal fishing conditions?

As the lake has a steep marginal shelf, its easy to get a depth of 12 – 14 feet about a rod length out. By using hemp and caster, I was hoping to get onto the better quality fish and avoid the huge numbers of 1-4oz fish which inhabit the lake. I achieved this by fishing at dead depth with caster as hookbait – but then found that i couldnt get any bites at all!
By slowly shortening up a few inches at a time, I eventually caught a couple of nice roach and a bream. The weather which had been deteriorating all morning finally saw me rained/blown off the lake just before 1pm.
On reflection, maybe I should have tried a mid depth on the drop rig, to see if it would bring more bites.
I’m sure a really good bag of winter roach can be had from this deep water venue – back to the drawing board (pinkies? bread punch? mid water? on the drop? hemp on the drop?). Theyre there – its just a matter of getting the approach right.