Donadea Lake

louthguy25

Anyone ever fish the lake in donadea forest park? It says theres roach, perch and eel but has anyone any experience of fishing it

blueshed

it must be 15years since i fished it.
plenty of roach and rudd back then.the lake use to have some large perch
up to 2lb.
im afraid my info is so out of date.

about 5 miles away there is another little lake called Ballinagfagh.
it is stuffed with roach-rudd-perch.also heard it has some tench and bream.
i fished this lake in 2009,so info a little better.

louthguy25

Might try that iv only fished the canal down here but im now living in maynooth so plenty places to pick

Daroxtar

I havent fished it but i've seen loads of fish in it when out for a walk. Plenty of perch and some other shoal fish of about a pound, I'm not a coarse fisherman so i couldnt tell you whether they were bream or roach or rudd, but they are definately there.

tin79

They are rudd, unless I am very much mistaken there were never Roach in it. Immature Rudd yes but not Roach. I have caught thousands of rudd in it but not a single Roach which is nice as pure Rudd waters are rare.

Perch too and eels. A few years back someone in their wisdom put three common carp around 6lbs into it but they didnt last the next winter.

Over the last few years it has gotten very overgrown and the head of decent fish (perch especially) seem to have dwindled.

With the high acidity and very low pH of Ballnafagh the fish in it tend to be small. Its from here that Donadea was actually originally stocked. So good stock but not the conditions to grow them. Its also very shallow even in the centre of the lake (for the most part there is a deeper cut on one side and some depper holes in the centre but not many) I would be very very surprised in Ballnafagh held any decent Bream or Tench.