St Johns

Im off to St Johns for my first visit next week! (24th)
Can anyone give me any advice for the water, not so much on bait but swims to look for Etc.
Ive been researching the water and get lots of different info about it, Ive been told that the venue is 12ft deep or more in alot of places and the bottom is fairly feature less with a good lot of weed in some places, do the fish hang mid water? I know there is alot of fish (1000+) but im sure if its deep most fish will spend time up in the water rather than on the bottom, any info will be good, ive looked at the website & also had a good chat with one of the ballifs on the phone & ive also looked at the other threads in this forum. Any info from anyone who has fished it and had fish using other methods other than just spodding out kilos of particles to a clear patch and sitting behind buzzers would be gratefully received.

thanks....

(and ive just seed the article by Rob Maylin & Nick Helleur in BC magazine)

craig,i've fished here a few times and always done quite well.nearly all my fish have fallen to single hookbaits cast to rolling fish.
as regards swims to look for,have a walk around and find the fish,they will usually be on the wind,once found,choosing a swim should be straight forward enough.
cheers mark.

Maize is doing well but little and often baiting is better than piling the bait in.If you imagine you are fishing for one fish at a time rather than going for the big hit you won't go far wrong.As Mark say's find the fish first and be prepared to move as they are very mobile.The road bank has a few features to fish at as does the top end (furthest from car park)The bank opposite the workings is fairly even but the maginal drop off is worth putting a bait on.If you find a weed bed do not be afraid of sticking a bait right in the middle , the fish will find it.

Thanks for the advice guys, and mark that bit about the drop off opposite the workings is interesting as im taking a pike set up to see if cant find one or two of the pike that are in here to good size

cheers!!

I fished there mid August on a 3 day stint
and found the fish in the far bay next
to the float lake.
Fishing the second to last peg along the
bay bank, we found a clear clay patch
in the middle of the weed about 40yds
straight in front of us. we took three fish
in 4hrs from it, with hardly any loose offerings, just a pva bag.

Thanks for the info Austin,

Seems like from most of the info ive got so far finding the fish is real important here (as is on most waters) I guess from everyones posts about single hook baits that most of the other visiters spend half the time spodding, so a different aproach is always a good plan,

Anyone used the Zig rig much here? St Johns is deep in most places so im sure the fish must be off the bottom a fair distance (not all of them but with 1000+ in a few large groups they could not all be on the bottom)
so maybe the Zig with a very light hookbait & leader might be the one as im sure they take particles or pellets that susspend in the upper water layers, they dont all sink to the bottom!

Craig having just read your thread, it reminded me that there was an article under features dated 11/06/01 about St Johns with the Web Site for the venue at the end I dont know if you have seen this and wether it will be of any help to you.

Thanks for that Bob & to everyone else for all the info, we will be there tomorrow im looking forward to it )

Good fishing and let us know how you got on.

Well what can i say..... The water is fishing real bad at the moment, We blanked, and so did everyone else on the water as well. Not a single fish out to anyone, (That includes people who where on Manor as well) Infact the fish did not show them selfs anywhere on the water at all for the first 2 days, and we saw them once for about 10mins last thing before it got dark on the 3rd day. Some of the other anglers had been at the water side longer than us and had not even had a bleep on the alarms!!
....But i will be going back again when things pick up a bit.

We also did 3 days at Linch Hill and that is the same with no fish the whole time we were there to anyone!

when i say we....i mean my mates went to Linch Hill and fished it not me ))