1 Acre(s)
The first water you come to when leaving the large car park at Alvechurch Fisheries, Horseshoe Lake is an acre and a half in size and has 36 new purpose-built wooden platform pegs.
With flat even banks, it is suitable for disabled anglers.
The sides on Horseshoe shelve away giving two feet of water in the margins and an average depth further out of between four and six feet.
The lake has a flat even bottom whilst on the banks there are irises, reeds and overhanging trees around much of the lake which provides cover for anglers from the fish and from each other.
One of the main features of Horseshoe Lake is the long central island.
This was formerly a long wide penninsula jutting out into the lake which provided several pegs from which anglers could fish.
The penninsula was made thinner and severed from the car park bank to turn it into a smaller island.
Although this has resulted in the number of available pegs being reduced, it has increased the amount of water available to fish and greatly improved the look of the lake.
At the far end of the lake is an attractive large bay (right) where there is plenty of open water.
Because it is Alvechurch's main match water,Horseshoe is stocked with a good range of mid-sized fish including roach, rudd and crucians to about 1lb; skimmers to 2lbs; bream averaging between 3lbs and 4lbs but running to 7lbs; tench to 4lbs but averaging about 1lb 8oz; chub and ide to 3lbs and a small head of hard fighting barbel between 4lbs and 7lbs which are well worth catching.
For those interested in carp, Horseshoe has been stocked with 600 fish between 4lbs and 10lbs which give exciting sport when taken on light tackle.
Although the carp are predominantly mirrors and commons, there are about a dozen ghost carp.
The most popular method for fishing Horseshoe Lake seems to be on the pole in the margins.
When targeting the carp, most anglers on the pole use an 18 or 20 elastic and size 12 or 14 hook with either soft hooker pellets, paste, luncheon meat or sweetcorn fished over a bed of small feeder pellets.
Those after the silver fish opt for a lighter rig of 8 to 10 elastic and 16s hook with double maggot as bait, again fished over a bed of feeder pellets.
The waggler also accounts for a lot of fish both in the margins and up against the island whilst those going to the island also use the open ended feeder packed with maggots, blocking the end of the feeder with paste and fishing two or three magoots on the hook.
Although Horseshoe is classed as an out and out match water because of the size of fish it holds, it is popular with pleasure anglers and offers a variety of attractive swims with the opportunity to catch decent bags of fish at a sitting.