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From the lack of blogging activity you might think that I’d not done much fishing this month – but then you’d be wrong.
I’ve fished a couple of Salford Friendly fundraising matches winning one match in a howling gale on the Rochdale canal with a single skimmer bream on a match that was abandoned after only 2 hours as being unfishable. The next Salford Friendly match on the Old River in Irlam started well with lots of bites and missed fish in the first hour, then as the match went on the bites dried up and i ended up with 12oz of tiddlers to claim 6th. And the last match on the Rochdale canal on a red hot sunny day I had a 5th place again with a few ounces of tiddler roach.
The matches we have fished so far have all been on rock hard venues, and I am beginning to lose the will to live. We’ve booked another 5 matches – this time on venues with better stocking density  – so hopefully catches will be higher and moods lighter.

In between all this match fishing, I’ve been blanking on the Manchester Ship Canal – while those fishing around me have been bagging big bream, and on my last trip to Drinkwater Park – suffered a blank in a swim which was alive with fizzing bubbles from bream.

The only saving grace has been a few good sessions on Sainsburys Pond – where even a numpty like me can bag up.

I’m going to get out this long weekend for a few hours at various venues – lets hope i can get a decent bend in the rod for a change.

Instead of driving into town, or to my office I often walk or ride my bike alongside the River Irwell which is a much more pleasant vista than the A56 corridor. It is rare though to see any sort of fishy activity – as the trout never seem to actively feed at the surface on the lower river. So when I noticed fish rising in the same spot twice in the space of a fortnight it really gave me an itch to get out trouting.

In the past I’ve had a couple of absolute lunkers from this area whilst lure fishing for pike, but have yet to take a trout from this section of river on the fly – for some reason I cant reconcile fishing a big urban river with the delicate fly fishing presentation needed to tempt the trout – I much prefer fly fiishing small streams and pocket water so on the Lower Irwell I tend to use small lures or wait until the coarse season starts and catch them on maggots.

So this evening after work, I ventured down to the river with my lure kit in hand to the spot where I’d seen the rising fish. I had a take from a good sized trout after only 15 minutes or so but it threw the crushed barbs on the copper bladed mepps I had tied on. Undeterred i carried on moving down stream losing a couple of spinners on the river bed iron mongery but still seeing the occasional fish rise which kept my confidence up.

Moments after missing that fish, I was joined by Irwell dry fly master Nick – who immediately spotted rising fish and started a stealthy move upstream to cast to them. His arrival was fortunate, as it wasn’t much later that I had a second take and a lovely little brownie took a shine to my mepps.
Both of us were overjoyed to see trout in this part of the river, its only 100 yards from my office and less than 5 minutes away from Nicks front door.

Within 5 minutes of returning my little fish, I looked upstream to see Nicks rod bending into this cracking Brownie.

An Irwell brownie, nudging 2lbs, caught on upstream dry fly in the Bronx of Lower Broughton – Urban Trouting at its best.
I cant believe that trout have moved into this area of the river in numbers – only 100yards from the office – its going to be hard concentrating on work this summer 🙂

With the evenings getting longer, its now possible to work til 5 and then get a couple of hours fishing.
I visited a local tench pit (the one behind Blackley Sainsburys) for the last two hours this evening, and fished soft hooker pellets hard up against the central reeds to catch a couple of small tench, loads of roach, and this tiny little carp just as the light was failing.

Great fun, and only 5 minutes away from home.
For anyone who wants to give it ago, take care choosing the hook you use, I started on a fairly fine wire pattern, but despite getting lots of bites wasn’t happy with the narrow gape of the hook and thought that I might do better on a wider gape hook, so I switched to a drennan super specialist wide gape size 18 hook. This pattern, though a wide gape resulted in bites drying up, I think the fish were put off by the weight and thicker gauge wire of the hook. As soon as i moved back to the finer wired narrower gaped middy pattern, the regular bites returned. I’ll have a mooch around the tackle shop later this week for a light wired wide gape pattern in a size 18 and let you know what i come up with.

I had high hopes for catching my first BIG ray, during a week away in Tenerife. I’ve managed to pick up on the location and method that regularly produces Butterfly and Sting Rays to over 200lbs from a local shore mark.

But as ever, taking fishing time for granted during a family holiday isn’t always guaranteed, and this week proved that, so the best i could manage was an hour or two catching colourful little parrot wrasse from the rocks in front our hotel. Suicidal little things which launch themselves at anything on a size 16 hook. Fun for a while but not what I had in mind when packing my telescopic beach caster and reel loaded with 80lb braid.

Always theres always the next time……..

I don’t often recommend peoples products, books or businesses – but having recently bought this book I’m going to make an exception to the rule. BUY THIS BOOK.

While I was raking out a swim on the lake behind my house yesterday evening I came across this beast.

Have you ever seen a caddis this big?
I also found this little fella

These photos were taken in Stoneclough this afternoon behind the Grapes Pub.
If you ever see anything like this please report it to:
Environment Agency Emergency Hotline on 0800 80 70 60

FFS things like this are just not on anymore.
No reports of any dead fish (yet)

At the back end of 2011, myself Nick and Paul had a day on camera with the BBC. Trying to catch fish on the Manchester Ship Canal outside their new Media City offices.

You can see how we got on here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/webwise/courses/manchester-ship-canal/lessons/manchester-ship-canal

we are on for 5 minutes at 1.27.30 or part 18 if you click on one of the blue squares down below.
Sadly all references we made to remarkable resemblance of a passing Asian tourist to Kim Jong-il hit the cutting room floor.

The piece was made to encourage people to use the internet – rather than as a film about angling – which is probably a good thing seeing as though we didnt even get a bite.

There always a wag insn’t there – but this one did provoke a wry smile

Its difficult to keep up with everyones blogs – these days everyones seems to be at it. Naturally theres the good, bad and indifferent.

I like to think that the blogs I follow represent a good cross section of the  better fly / match / specimen / pleasure anglers in the Northwest.

A coarse/pleasure blog on the River Dee? – missing for a while – and I should have added this excellent blog a long time ago – apologies Danny

http://www.satonmyperch.blogspot.com/

Now added