The fishery is a main breeding site for toads, having the deeper water with submerged weeds, which they need for breeding. They arrive in the hundreds in early April from wherever they have been hibernating, usually from the adjoining forest and marsh. In a good breeding year, the edges of the ponds have many thousands of tadpoles swimming round. Frogs arrive from hibernation in early March and need shallow water that heats up quickly to breed, so we made small shallow ponds for them. They are very successful with many balls of frogspawn in early spring. Frogs breed on average two to three weeks earlier than toads.

The newts come out of hibernation at the same time as the toads. They spawn in both deep and shallow water. Unlike the mass spawn of frogs and toads, they lay single eggs usually on submerged weed, and by wrapping each egg in a weed frond.

They, and their hatchlings, are the main predator of frog tadpoles, mostly avoiding the toad tadpoles, which are distasteful to most predators.