The poles
Present in large quantities, the perch of the Tolla lake sometimes reach beautiful sizes. Even if the majority of the fish measure between 5 and 20 cm, some specimens easily exceed 40 cm and, perhaps, even 50 cm. These fish gather in schools of hundreds of individuals of various sizes, in depths varying between 0 and 15 m depending on the season.
Very nice summer fishing with surface lures is possible there, as well as scratch fishing and vertical fishing in winter. In my experience, the drop-shot works particularly well for catching large numbers of fish of all sizes, but large individuals react especially on lures over 9 cm. The presence of small perch in large quantities triggers cannibalistic behavior in large individuals.
Catfish
Arrived quite recently, the population of catfish of Tolla explodes. The majority of the fish are less than a meter long, although some fish over 1.60m have been caught in recent years. Reproduction is undoubtedly easy for these fish, in waters that heat up very quickly at the approach of summer in a Mediterranean climate, but remain cold in winter, thanks to the altitude of the water.
The very steep banks of this body of water force the fish to live in open water and feed in the schools of perch. The small individuals often have full bellies and hopefully will grow up quickly to regulate themselves and offer nice trophies. These catfish are particularly reactive to large shads in pelagic animation, emitting a lot of vibrations that make them easily detectable by the very sensitive barbels of these fish.
Pikes and pike-perch
Rather rare, but large, pikes and pike-perch seem to develop there with a little more difficulty. For pike, the absence of large grassy areas limits reproduction. As far as pike-perch are concerned, they are probably well hidden under the schools of perch and wait for the night to start hunting. It is rather rare to come across pikes and pike-perch of less than 40 cm. The average size of the pikes I could see and take out is around 80 cm to 1m05. They are very fit fish, with a stocky body and, like catfish, on the verge of becoming obese.
The phenomenal amount of perch allows them to feed without too much effort throughout the year. The lake being little fished, it is hard to imagine the proportions that the biggest fish can reach. Some stories tell of pike-perch of more than 90 cm, metric pike (which I could see for myself) as well as big catfish.
