Willow Hall Dam, Sowerby Bridge

Address

Dam Head Road, Sowerby Bridge, HX6 2SR, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom

Fishery Information

Willow Hall Dam is just up the valley from Gratrix Dam. It is a small dam with room for about 16 anglers. Despite its size, the dam is really deep. As it is set into the steep valley, the dam also has very steep sides, and the centre of the lake is over 25ft deep. The depths make this quite a challenging water to fish, but exciting too. If you’re fishing on the bottom of this lake, it can almost feel like deep-sea fishing. When you get a bite, it can take a long time for the fish to surface, and there are so many fish species in this lake, you can never be sure what you’ve caught until it’s in the net.

What size do the fish go to?

There are some nice carp in this lake, we aren’t sure how big they go. There are also f1s, bream, roach, rudd and perch. There is also some nice chub in the lake and some ide too. The local anglers who fish Willow Hall Dam all the time say there could be two catfish in this lake to nice weights as well. If you’re targeting catfish here, you’ll certainly have your work cut out for you, as no one has caught them, barely anyone has seen them.

What tactics work well?

Fishing on the bottom of this lake is extremely tricky with most tactics unless you are using a bottom weight method of some kind. Method feeder fishing does work well here, and the occasional take on PVA bags has been known. This is a really tricky lake to fish, though, so use a tactic that you trust.