British Waterways has been extremely busy preparing for 2008’s fishing season by enhancing its fisheries this winter.  

3300lb of excess roach and perch have been removed from lake one at the Makin fisheries complex and transferred to canals within the West Midlands. The navigations benefiting from the additional stocks are the Coventry canal near Polesworth, the Birmingham & Fazeley near the Tyburn, the Birmingham Main line going in to Wolverhampton, the Staffs and Worcester at Wolverhampton and the Staffs and Worcester at Gailey. 

A further cropping of 1400lb is planned to remove excess roach and perch from other pools on phase one at Makins fishery to benefit canals in Dudley and Tipton.  A large stocking of bream and carp in to Lake 5 will take place nearer the beginning of the spring.  Also at the Makins site, Anchor pool has been developed in to a silver fish only pool with additional stockings of 1000lb of roach and skimmers; all the carp have been removed and used to stock Derwent pool and Severn pool has received an additional 80 carp from stock ponds on site. 

A boost of 3600 new small carp has been received by Blythe Waters near Solihull and these have been distributed evenly between Bridge, Willow and Cherries pools.  Earlswood Lakes has taken stock of 2800lb of new 2-3lb carp to bring in new generations and boost existing numbers. Future plans include the removal of 200 of the larger carp from Earlswood and to boost the main specimen pool, Lake 1, at Makins fishery.