Hours Of Happiness

I’ve been prowling the house like a caged beast these past few months. My local rivers have been bank high and unfishable nearly all winter, the wind and rain has been incessant, and my mojo for fishing in cold, wet, windy horrible conditions non existent.

At last there’s been an orange warmth emitting blob in the sky – and I’ve taken full advantage.

With Manchester’s rivers still way above their fishable limits, full of brown water and sewage they were not an option, so a bit of canal fishing was the way to go.

First of all a few hours at Islington Marina in the centre of Manchester. I’d intended to do a bit of drop shotting, but discovered when I’d parked the car and started to tackle up, that I’d brought the wrong kit. A little box of float gear rather than my drop shotting kit – duh – what an idiot.

Thankfully, there are plenty of hidey holes in my car where I often stash odd bits of tackle. And I found some small 4cm curly tail soft lures, and half a dozen 1g jig head hooks.. More than enough to catch me a few fish.

We had a good hour, and a few small fish, nothing big but I didn’t care it just felt great to be out with a rod again

Sadly we only had an hour or so of fishy happiness as it clouded over and started lashing it down all over again.

I’d been hoping for a few dry days and lower river levels, but it just wasn’t to be.

So a couple of days later, I’d been planning a trip across the Pennines for some more Yorkshire Grayling action, but the rivers were still way too high so another canal trip was the alternative.

This time I made my way to a local stretch of the Bridgewater Canal in Monton.

Its an easy spot to fish as you can park your car immediately behind your peg, and there are always a few fish to be had at top2 +2 sections out. The canal is very coloured but it doesn’t stop the fish from feeding. Using a quarter of a pint of very old maggots that were well on the turn, I had a nice time with Tommy catching small roach and perch. When he got cold/board he went to sit in the car and his Nintendo Switch kept him company while i did my best to keep the bites coming.

My friend Gaz had a 14″ (2lb roach) from the same spot a few days earlier but the best I could manage was this one at about 6-80z. Quite a few very fat spawn laden perch, no skimmers or other species. And just like the other trip, the sunshine didn’t last and it started lashing down again.

Time for home, but again it was nice to be on the bank, even if it was only for a couple of hours.

Lets see what next week brings.