The Ouse Cambridgshire

Does anybody have any tips on how to find and catch the bigger fish .

I have now lived in the area for two years and have fished stretches up towards Ely and the river is often very slow flowing up there .
I have fished godmanchester , paxton and St Neots stretches to try and find someware I feel comfortable with.
The closest area to me is the St Neots to St Ives area but the river changes so much and in some stretches seems hard to find any fish in others there are so many small fish its unreal.
I fished up at St Ives today for the first time and was supprised at the flow and the fact that the river remains very clear even after boat traffic but near pocket park area St Neots the water has much more colour.

My river experiance mainly comes from the derwent in derby or the cam in cambridge both of these rivers are nothing like the ouse at all one is very fast and powerfull the other fishtank clear and very slow.

I suppose I just find it very intimidating to fish on the ouse in most places it just seems very deep and dark with no way of fish spotting .
I have considered moving on to the Ivel but that does mean joining expensive clubs as there is no day ticket waters at all on the Ivel.

I know there are supposed to be large carp in the ouse in these stretches as well as decent fish of most species but I have never seen them or would not know how to strart I am not a long stay fisherman more of a roving around for a few hours at a time looking for fish .
I fish for all species but would like a zander a good perch or decent eel the most ,though a good carp ,tench ,bream, barbel or chub would be nice .

Just feel that since it's my local i should be getting to grips with it a bit more by now.

Any help would be great.

Contact Gordy Howes and have a day out with him. He knows that area like the back of his hand and runs the St Ives Lakes with carp to 50lb +.
Google st Ives lakes or pm me for details

Something that you have to realise is that fish are not spread evenly throughout the river. They tend to shoal up in groups and have preferred areas.

I learnt this lesson many years ago when fishing a new river for chub. What I did was to introduce handfuls of cut up sliced bread over a period of a couple of minutes, then follow it down stream to locate the feeding fish. I did this on several occasions and to my surprise found that there were entire sections that never showed a feeding fish. The funny thing was that from the bank these areas seemed no different to the areas that had an abundance of fish, though there must have been something that they prefered about the areas they lived in. Once I had located the holding areas they proved good areas all year round.