I read a lot about fishing reservoirs and lakes and the differences.  I fish a lot of quarries, both pit and strip.  Would that be considered a reservoir?  

It seems the characteristics are closer than to a lake.  

Personally, I consider quarries and pits as their own separate category of water body, and approach them appropriately. If I had to classify them, I’d group them in with “ponds” and other small manmade bodies, recognizing there are differences even there.

1 hour ago, Team9nine said:

Personally, I consider quarries and pits as their own separate category of water body, and approach them appropriately.

 

Exactly! ?

Nailed it.

 

Pits and quarries are completely different animals and a category all their own.

they are the same as small streams and also the Great Lakes

Looked up the words in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Definition of reservoir

1: a place where something is kept in store: such as

a: an artificial lake where water is collected and kept in quantity for use

b: a part of an apparatus in which a liquid is held

c: SUPPLY, STOREa large reservoir of educated people

2: an extra supply : RESERVE

3: an organism in which a parasite that is pathogenic for some other species lives and multiplies usually without damaging its host

 

quarry

 noun (2)

plural quarries

Definition of quarry (Entry 2 of 4)

1: an open excavation usually for obtaining building stone, slate, or limestone

2: a rich source

 

In other words, Buggs Island is also called Kerr Reservoir and it is a very large lake on the Virginia/North Carolina border.

 

The Richmond Metropolitan Authority that operates the toll road into and out of the City of Richmond, Va has a quarry off Forest Hill Avenue. This quarry has very high walls and is not very big. 

@Team9nine describes it in a concise and elegant way.  Quarries are an oddball among the bodies of water.  There are some where all banks drop straight off to very deep water.  There are some where there might be a shallow end that drops into the deep end and the deep bank drops off precipitously.  There are others that aren't that deep at all.  There are older quarries that are dug in any number of ways not mentioned.  Pits are similar.  They are all different based on why they were dug, what materials were extracted from them, and what machinery was used to dig them.  

Something that could help you pick apart the quarry would be to look up the mining permit and see if they have any as-builts for it. This will indicate depths of excavation with contour lines. A lot of times these are available to the public if the project is closed out, you just have to do a little digging in your state mining website. They may not be available if the quarry is old though. Good luck! 

There is very little, published information about fishing pits and quarries, but there are some similarities to other bodies of water. You can do a search here for strip pits, or quarries. You can also check out info on bluffs and drop-offs (ledges). One characteristic common to both is the machinery access area that will have a slower taper and, or a stair step access to the deeper areas.  The strip pits I’ve fished have areas where unusable substrate was dumped within the pit that adds another structural component.