Pleasure Fishing Bradshaw Hall Fisheries Lake 7

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.