Where To Fish: Magic Lakes

In the South East though, there isn’t a massive number of venues where you can go and practise the kind of methods you may need to employ on waters like Tunnel Barn Farm or Lindholme Lakes, with many southern venues favouring bigger carp stocks.

Over the last few years though, one venue which has catered for the demand of anglers for prolific f1 sport is Magic Lakes near Waltham Abbey.


Based in the middle of a busy industrial estate, you could be forgiven in thinking you’ve taken a wrong turn but, once you enter the fishery gates you have a real oasis in the middle of the hustle and bustle!

There are two lakes at Magic, the big lake and the small lake with a combined 48 pegs making it an ideal open match venue and a great option for anglers who want to hone their skills when it comes to tricky f1s.


Open matches are held at the venue on Tuesday’s, Thursday’s and Sunday’s throughout the year, and booking early is advised as these are incredibly popular with most matches sold out each week.

With everywhere fishing so hard over the winter I was looking for something different to my usual winter haunts and I noticed a few match reports popping up on Facebook from anglers fishing at Magic, what impressed me was the amount of fish they were catching – plenty of f1s not all massive fish, a real mix, but you would be able to get plenty of bites which in the winter is all we really crave.


The other impressive thing about reading the match reports that other anglers were putting up was how consistent the weights were, with loads of anglers within 10-15lb of the framing weights it suggests that the fishing is relatively fair, and the fish are well spread.

With a day off work, I decided to have a go one week, and I was really impressed with the fishery so much so I have returned quite a few times since with some success and now we’re into the spring the fishing has really picked up pace!


The winning weights in the winter were anything from 40lb to 70lb, but now its warmed up you’ll need 80-120lb to win most matches with lots of quality back up weights.

Having enjoyed my fishing here so much, I decided to get the cameras down for a day to show a few tactics that have been producing the goods here in the last few weeks.

I’ve set up on the big lake today, a peg one off the point but if I’m honest I still don’t know what is a good area and what is a bad area it changes so often, but that is one of the great things about this venue.

Easy Does It!


One of the most important parts of fishing for f1s on venues like this is not overdoing it before you’ve got a feel for what is going on, by this I mean starting off with baits and feeding small amounts until you can gauge a response, or see what other anglers are catching on around you.

With this in mind, I’ve soaked up some 2mm micros and pumped some 4mm expanders, this is a great approach in the spring and the perfect way to kick off without ruining your peg before you’ve even started.


The depth on this lake is very uniform with around 2ft across and 3ft down the middle, which is almost purpose made for f1 fishing!

After having a plumb around on the far bank which is 14m of TKS G-Series G60 away, I found a flat area which would be ideal to tap a few micros onto, in recent weeks this has given me a real quick response so I was expecting some bites immediately. 


My rig on this was a MAP 0.3g F1 Wire float on 0.15mm MAP Optimum Power down to a four-inch hook length of 0.11 to a size 18 B911 F1 hook, shotting wise a simple strung bulk above the hook length is as complicated as it gets! 

Short kits are my choice for this venue due to the depth and all of my kits today include 6-8 MAP TKS Twin Core hollow which is perfect for the mixed sizes of fish I expect to catch.


Sprinkling some micros in from a Flexi-Pot, I had signs on the float immediately today and you could tell that the fish wanted to feed. Lots of liners quickly made me change the way I fed the pellets to get cleaner bites after an initial run of chunky f1s which ranged from 8oz right up to 3lb!

With a few lost fish, a change to feeding the pellets pressed into the pot rather than fed loose definitely helped to tidy things up, making the process of catching my next fish far more efficient.


Fishing across like this is a great way to start, but I do feel that to win here you need to catch somewhere else too and seek out the better stamp, which always makes the difference at the scales.

Down The Track

The line where I hope to catch very well further into the match is down the middle – this is still quite shallow at around 3ft but you always tend to find that the fish in this area only really turn up for one reason and that is to feed!


I’ve got a similar set up as I’ve got for fishing across to fish on the deck, but I’ve also got a shallow rig set up – simple stuff, 0.15g MAP Shallow float 0.15mm to 0.11 and a size 18 hook and the same elastic set up through a short kit. 

All the time I’d been fishing across I’d been loose feeding some maggots at 6m, which puts me just short of the middle today, after catching well across and seeing a few signs down the track I couldn’t resist having a look.


Dropping in on the deck with double red maggot on the hook, I had a few signs and eventually started to catch a few fish but the difference here was I was catching a mix of fish ide, small tench and f1s but none of the bigger fish which this line can often produce.

By upping my feed and feeding less often I was able to locate a few bigger f1s up to 2lb, but what I’d hoped would happen did eventually happen, and I began to see a few swirls in the feed!



Shallowing Up!

With the water temperature on the rise, it isn’t a huge surprise that the fish have come shallow today and I actually caught some fish shallow the day previous on my way to an open match win on the other side of the lake.

Shipping out the rig, I flicked the rig out past the pole tip and was into bites straight away but there were a lot of small nuisance fish to contend with – I would need to change my feeding to catch a better stamp by feeding them off.


Fortunately ide are gorge feeders and once they’re full they generally don’t return, if the stamp is good I’m happy to catch them but with the fish being very small with some roach mixed in it isn’t conducive to catching a big weight. 

I also changed my shotting pattern from a strung-out rig to a bulk just above the hooklength loops to get the rig to the full depth as soon as possible.

It wasn’t long before the f1s responded to heavier feeding and a more positive rig. Those bigger fish I’d been hoping to catch finally appeared with the average well over 1lb right up to 3lb, which makes putting a weight together so easy.


Finding that area of your peg where the fish want to feed when they really switch on is a massive part of commercial fishing for f1s, timing it right is another key aspect.

If I’d gone shallow earlier or even fished on my track line on the bottom without building it up, I would have probably just moved on disappointed with a few small fish to show, assuming there was nothing in the peg.

It had been an awesome day’s fishing at a relatively new venue for me and with around 70lb of f1s caught in just three hours it was a clear sign that big match winning weights are just around the corner!

If you haven’t been to Magic Lakes before I really suggest you book onto one of the matches and give it a go.