Fishing Salford Quays - Smash And Grab

Words and moving pictures !!

After Saturday morning dance classes for little girls, Saturday morning football for little boys, and with an early evening dinner birthday meal with my eldest (who can tolerate us between 5 and 7pm) to come, I only had a short afternoon window of opportunity to slot in a bit of fishing.

And then when that short window for a few hours fun presented itself … bloody hell … where do I go? There are so many venues within 20 minutes of home I’m spoilt for choice. Anyway, after last weekends great session at Salford Quays drop shotting with garden worms, I decided to go back and fish the same few swims with small soft plastic lures to see if how they performed when compared to worms. (and the fact that I’d been sent some lures to try by a manufacturer I know meant that I could give him a bit of feedback too).

The Pink and the White Long Paddle Tails worked really well on drop shot rig – we didn’t really have time to give the jig heads a chance

So, back to exactly the same swims as last weekend. But with lures not worms. Here’s a photo of the lures I was going to use, but I only ended up using the pink and white long tail lures and the yellow paddle tail. I didn’t get time to tie on the small sickle tail lures, but I’m 100% sure they would work really well.

We caught plenty on the hot pink long paddle tails

Not as many fish in the linking canals now the temperatures have dropped

Sad to say that once the redevelopment of Cotton Quay takes place, this part of the quays is never going to be the same again,, for how much longer will be allowed to fish here 🙁

After a week of cold weather and nearly constant rain, the fish which were in the shallower 7ft water of the canals, had moved into the deeper 23ft water of the main docks. And we found the fish in the bottom 3ft, and that they wanted a near static rather than moving presentation.

As soon as we sussed out how the fish wanted the baits to be presented we again had near constant sport for the hour and a half we had to fish.

The fish loved the white paddle tails too

I only had 3g drop shot leads (i need to replenish my tackle box) so had to pinch on a couple of SSG to get to around the 7g thats needed to get the bait down quickly and keep in touch with the bait – the hook is a size 6 Drennan super specialist

These white long tails worked really well.

We didn’t catch anything big (the perch run to 4lb in the quays) but it’s impossible to tire of that electric feeling in the rod tip once a perch grabs the lure and shakes its head.

Happy times.