Venue types
How the water behaves
Tactics for commercials, canals, rivers, stillwaters, reservoirs and ponds. No peg maps. No invented fisheries.
Commercial fishery
Day-ticket lakes built for sport: islands, pegs, F1s, carp, and a café. The easiest place to learn, and still a place you can fish very well.
Canal
A towpath, a far shelf, boats, and some of the most thoughtful fishing in the country. Bread punch, pole, and waggler still rule.
Natural stillwater
Pits, meres, estate lakes and waters that were not built as day-ticket carp mills. Lilies, silt, snags, and fish that do not have to eat your bait.
River
Running water. Creases, gravel, streamer weed, and a statutory coarse close season in England and Wales: 15 March to 15 June inclusive.
Reservoir
Big, often windswept stillwaters. Bream, pike, trout rules on some, and a cage feeder that has to handle distance.
Pond / estate lake
Small, often weedy, often shy. Crucians, tench, rudd and the odd carp. Light tackle and a small baited spot.