Our annual visit to Commonwood Fishery in Wrexham to crop silver fish from the high productive clay pools. A great demonstration of how to establish a healthy fishery from the beginning, avoiding bank erosion, aggressive summer algal blooms and their respiratory nature on DO2.
However, although good marginal plants are great at maintaining consistent water quality, the refuge that they provide juvenile fish in the winter means that draining the water below the reedline is essential if you want to remove a good proportion of these juvenile fish. Without draining, you can only crop the larger fish, when the smaller juvenile fish are the fish you want to remove as they're using lots of oxygen and are rarely caught or appreciated by anglers. Missing just 1 year of cropping these fish will hold the fish back and have a negative impact on the angling, remove these fish in the winter to minimise summer issues.