roach

Fishing At Monton Lighthouse

27th August 2018 by Mike Duddy

You might think that I’ve been out sea fishing going by the title of this post – but Monton Lighthouse is 30 miles from the sea – located on the banks of the Bridgewater Canal in deepest darkest Salford.

I’ve been interested in fishing this bit of the cut for a number of years now for a few reasons, 1. you can park your car right behind your peg (see photos below) 2. the water is stained orange by the ochre colour caused by washout of old mine shafts that honeycomb the area 3. its near my office and somewhere that I think might hold some decent tench, bream and carp.

However today I had the kids with me – so armed with a top 2 with 4’s elastic, Katies 6ft dayglo pink rod, some maggots and half the contents of the local sweeties shop we set up for a short 2 hour session.

Katie has lots of patience and will sit and fish for ages, but I can only get half an hour out of Tommy before his attention wanders – he spent most of the time playing with different radio stations on the car radio – but at least i got a couple of hours in.

We caught small roach and perch from the off – a delicate rig 1lb bottom size 22 hook. Nothing over 6oz but they kept on coming.

Now that I’ve tried it out once on maggot and battered the bits on the inside line, I might revisit with some proper kit and fish hemp and caster to see if the suspected bigger fish which live in the vicinity might want to come out to play.

The nearest tackle shop is Monton Tackle less than half a mile away. And this section of canal is controlled by Warrington Anglers … you can buy a ticket from the tackle shop

Plenty of small perch – a bit washed out colour caused by the ochre stained water in the canall

Canal Fishing — Some of the roach have a lovely blue sheen

Biggest fish of the day – not huge by any stretch of the imagination – but a delight for a 3 yr old

Katie wants to know why they don’t sell pink maggots

Pleasure Fishing Bradshaw Hall Fisheries Lake 7

25th January 2017 by Mike Duddy

It was far too nice a day to remain stuck in the office, so when the phone rang with the offer of a couple of hours on the bank I jumped at the chance.

The venue chosen was Bradshaw Hall Fishery in Bolton – not my normal sort of venue – but ideal for a cold clear January afternoon when bites elsewhere would be hard to come by.

I had some old maggots that were on the turn, and a stop off to buy a sliced loaf gave us plenty of options for hook bait….

We considered stopping off at a tackle shop on the way to buy some crushed hemp, but both agreed that the fish would be happy with very little feed, and that a bit of loose fed maggot would be more than enough to bring the fish on……. and this proved right when we got stuck in to the fishing

Its been a while since I fished at Bradshaws, so being short of time we set up on Lake 7 which is near to the cafe.

I set up with a very fine rig,,, a 0.2g pole float, size 20 hook and 0.08mm hook length.

A good plumbing up session revealed that the lake was only 2 and a half foot deep – making us question our decision to fish such a shallow lake on a cold crisp day.

However I had a small roach on my first put in (on maggot), followed by another, and another……then a F1,,,, then a gudgeon… then. the float didnt stop burying all afternoon – from 12 til 3 we caught fish after fish. I also had skimmers, crucian carp, a small ide.

A great bit of sport for a short winter session.

It sounds easy but I had to work for the fish…. constantly changing hook baits to keep the bites coming as if I stayed on any one bait for too long the bites dried up,,, before coming back immediately after changing bait.

By constantly swapping bread flake, punch of different sizes, caster and maggot – the fish just kept coming.

Nothing big but a great confidence booster after thehigh number of blank sessions on the rivers and canals I endured at the back end of 2016..

And another 6 species knocked off the 2017 species challenge – bringing by years total up to 8 species.

I feel like a little Grayling trip next.

Scratching The Itch

29th March 2016 by Mike Duddy

Two itches got a scratching today

Poorly Tommy with a bout of chicken pox, and my own mental itch which developed after catching a score or more of small roach in less than an hour last time out on Sainsburys Pond.

Fishing with a toddler is always going to be a short and sweet trip, and so it proved with Tommys boredom threshold being about half an hour.

However, in that half hours fishing we had 4 fish,, the smallest around 3oz and the biggest 10oz – which is a great improvement in quality from the one ouncers I was catching on punch bread 4 days ago.

So Tommy got some much needed fresh air, and I satisfied a bit of curiosity.

Next visit to this venue will see me taking a bit more kit, than the minimal 4m whip, float rig, plummet, disgorger and bait which i put in my coat pocket today.

I’m convinced that there’s a really good net of quality roach possible from this venue, i just need to keep refining the tactics.