Here are the observations of a North Manchester Angler written in 2009 – it gives a great insight as to the impact Cormorants have made on my local River Irwell. (and I’ve added a few observations of my own to conclude)
“I’ve run Wickenhall bottom lake in Newhey for around 8 years now. It was a chance remark by one of the regular anglers about fishing the river Irwell in Manchester. loads of roach, most of them between 6 ounces and a pound he said, and on some days we get maybe 8 or nine chub up to 3lb or so, we’ve even had a couple of bream too.After probing the said angler on areas to fish, he said ,”don’t go on your own cos it can be a bit rough, and swims are hard to find but worth the effort if you find the roach shoals”.a couple of months later and after talking my daughter into a pre Xmas shopping trip, (on the condition that we have an hour looking at the river for possible access points, I was stood high over the Irwell on the impressive Trinity bridge, fish were regularly topping a few hundred yards upstream, nothing massive, but definitely fish. Anyway plans were made for me and Pete Healy, to go and have a go the following Sunday. We arrived 30mins or so before first light. Fish were topping everywhere. We both started on maggot feeder. My first bite came before I put the rod down, a perfect roach of 10 ounces. I turned to tell Pete, who was fifty feet further upstream, only to find him with a similar fish in the landing net. The next few hours were ridiculous. Fish after fish came to the double maggot baits. In fact at one stage we both stopped fishing for half an hour to have a brew and a butty. Without going through every session we had in a period of 4 years, I’ll just say that the place was incredible. On numerous occasions, Pete, my daughter Abbie (9 to 13 years old at the time)on many, and I mean many days had at least 50 or sixty pounds of roach, chub, perch and dace. we only ever saw another four or five lads fishing over all that time and all of us kept it pretty quiet. Stickfloat was probably the best method with maggot, caster and hemp. But we caught on big baits like bread and meat too. You’ll have noticed by now a lot of this article is written in the past tense. These glory days of the Irwell have now sadly passed. After speaking to one of the regulars last year and finding out the fishing had gone downhill we decided to have a couple of sessions in the old swims,(we hadn’t been down for over 10 months). I can tell you it was a total waste of time, conditions were spot on for trotting, the water was perfect, but not a single bite in four trips. now it’s quite normal for shoals of silver fish to hold up all winter in city centre rivers. whether it’s the lights or maybe due to it being a tad warmer I don’t know, but it happens in lots of rivers in the UK. It’s also normal for fish to suddenly not be there one year for apparently no reason, quite often though they won’t be that far away. So with that in mind we took my small rowing boat (normally used for piking) to have a look around with a fish finder. We did find fish quarter of a mile downstream in a couple of places and caught some on trotted maggot from the boat. These were mainly roach but we only had about six each. There’s a word I’ve deliberately missed out in this article up to yet, well here it comes…… ……..CORMORANTS……… In the last two years of fishing we saw a huge increase in the numbers of these birds, starting with one or two at first and then going up to dozens in the end. We saw them many times taking big roach, chub and dace all day long on some days. It was heartbreaking to see and is the main reason we stopped fishing there. Previously unmarked, pristine fish, were now very badly marked indeed and the fishing dropped dramatically. The reason I decided to submit this article was to let the lads in the Manchester area, who fished the Irwell now or in the past, know about the situation. 2008 between Xmas and new year we took the boat onto the Irwell. At this time of year, centre of town should be solid with fish….. we spent ALL DAY looking in every nook and cranny from M.E.N arena all the way to Salford quays. WE DID NOT SEE ANY FISH AT ALL IN MILES OF RIVER, OR ANY OF THE BASINS, ETC, THAT CAN’T BE ACCESSED FROM THE BANK. So what’s happened to all those beautiful fish? Pollution would have turned some up for all to see but no one has reported any. Maybe they migrated further than we looked, but I doubt it, I think the black death is back in the country……..only this time it can fly. As a footnote we caught from six swims in the centre of town. (are you ready for this): ROACH TO OVER 2LB – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Fishing Fiends Opinion Below Coming to the end of 2018 now – its interesting to see how the Irwell has changed – the roach have all but disappeared despite regular restocking by the Environment Agency. The bream in the lower river have grown on to near double figures, carp started to show – some of them nudging 30lbs Sea trout ??? do they really exist ?? or are they just smolted up brownies – which now grow to nearly 13lbs. The three huge locks on the Manchester Ship Canal are an effective barrier to migratory fish (though plans are being put in place to enable fish passage in the future) Pike — well they are still present throughout the river from Bury down to Manchester, with lots of small jacks but the occasional big girl to 20lb. Tench – I’ve never seen one from the Irwell. Grayling – a recent stocking by the EA of 3000 tiddlers but an odd fish to 12 inches being caught in the Bury area. Dace are present but not prolific. Chub to 6lbs, Plenty of Gudgeon. A smattering of Perch but they are not prolific. 200 Barbel were stocked at the waters meet of the Irwell and Croal in the early 90s by Farnworth Anglers – and the odd fish has turned up between Bury and Manchester to 13lb – however these fish are as rare as hens teeth, and its a real achievement to catch the mythical Irwell Barbel. The EA stocked 500 fingerlings in 2014, and again with 500 slightly bigger fish in 2017 and another 500 in winter 2018. However they don’t appear to thrive in Irwell waters and are still the Holy Grail for Irwell anglers. As water quality improves – the fishing has without doubt declined from the halcyon days of the early late 90s and early 2000s. I too can remember catching 50lb+ nets of roach on hemp and maggot – but these events are now a thing of the past. However,the trout fishing goes from strength to strength as water quality improves, and their fry are better suited to fast flowing water. Without doubt the Gooseander which so effectively predate on fish fry, the Cormorants which so effectively predate on adult fish, mink and frequent pollution incidents have decimated our river. I wonder what the future holds..
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roach
Fishing At Monton Lighthouse
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
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.
Scratching The Itch
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.