Abstract: During 2010 to 2012, fish diversity in Qingcaosha Reservoir was studied based on gillnets (multimesh monofilament gillnets and singlemesh trammel gillnets), electric fishing, bottom trawl and cage. The investigation collected a total of 34 fish species, belonging to 8 orders, 12 families. Cypriniformes contained the largest number of species (19 species) in the collection, followed by Perciformes (6 species). Multimesh monofilament gillnets sampled 19 fish species, of which Coilia nasus was the dominant species. Hierarchical cluster analysis indicated that mesh size of monofilament gillnets had significant influence on the composition of catches: C. nasus and Hemiculter bleekeri were the dominant species of catches of gillnet netting with mesh size of 2 cm, while C. nasus was the dominant species of catches of the nettings with mesh sizes larger than 2 cm. Species numbers and the catch per unit of effort (CPUE) had a decreasing tendency with the increasing  mesh size. Mesh size also had significant effects on the total length distribution of the dominant species C. nasus, which increased with the increasing  mesh size. The results suggested that a combination of several gears was required to reliably estimate fish diversity of standing waters.