Back On Th’Irwell

The rivers been unfishable for large parts of this summer – and during the windows when the river has been fishable yours truly has been under the thumb, dressed in decorators garb brush and roller in hand.
I’ve been trying to get out for an evening on the river with Adam (Rawtenstall Kick Sampler) for ages now, and we finally made it out fishing together on Saturday evening.
A nice bright evening – the fish were initially thin on the ground, but as the evening wore on and our ring rustiness wore off we started to get amongst the fish.
My old favourite the “irwell imp” accounted for the largest fish of the evening, which despite coming in at less than a pound ran me all over the river on our light tackle.

A cracking evening, doing something I’ve really missed.
My early season decision to target specimen fish hasnt come to fruition, as i seem to have been sidetracked organising and fishing a series of matches. Not my favourite form of fishing, but I’m glad to report that I’ve finished in the top half of each match, and managed to win one of them (my first ever match win).

A Diddy Duddy is due at the end of August which I’m sure will curtail fishing activity even more effectively than the bad weather, so I cant see any of my early season targets being acheived without a huge dollop of luck.

The blogs been quiet recently – that doesnt meant I’ve not been fishing though – lots of sessions with nothing really worth writing about – and a couple of big fish getting off have numbed the urge to write.

Please visit Waterfeature…

…and if you watch the video at the top, then read the background to the Kelham Island hydro scheme and wish that the good folk of Sheffield would learn from the terrible consequences of hydro schemes elsewhere and reverse the decision to plough ahead with their own hydro scheme, please vote on the petition at the top right hand side of the blog.  You need not be a citizen of Sheffield to vote. All you need to be is a citizen of the world and care about the life in and around the world’s rivers.



…the terrible consequences of hydro schemes elsewhere…

The river Don, a natural salmon river, has suffered about 400 years of abuse.  It is an amazing example of how a river can come back to life if folks stop abusing it.  The saddest aspect of this scheme is that, after a few short years of improvement, the river Don is going to be set back to the impoverished state it was in, when really it should be getting all the help it can to keep on coming fully back to life.

You can give the Don some help by registering and voting your disapproval on http://waterfeature1.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/screening-and-cleaning.html

(Lifted from Regular Rods blog but well worth the copy and paste)

Another problem is that the noise from these small scale hydro-electric schemes may be scaring off migrating fish, preventing them from reachng their spawning grounds. See this article on the Settle Hydro:
http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/at-a-glance/main-section/salmon-fishing-harmed-by-hydro-scheme-1-4193772
Of course this problem is also very critical locally, where three hydro schemes are being installed (one already generating) on the Goyt, which has a nascent salmon run, not yet properly established. The hydro scheme may well ensure that the salmon run NEVER gets to be of any significant size.

(thanks JayZs)

The track down to the Lagoons is best described as “a bit rough” – which also happens to be a good description of a few of the locals down in deepest darkest Salford. But as you turn left at the end of the track – you get a glimpse of a wildlife haven in the centre of one of the UKs dirtiest industrial areas. Its a real green oasis – which you have to see for yourself to really appreciate. My description of the locals might be a little off putting – a better description would be hard outer shell – soft inner centre – like chocolate eclairs. The work these lads have done is incredible and the transformation they have made to the lagoons incredible.

The Lagoons have been over run and neglected for years prior to Salford Lads Angling Club taking an interest a couple of years ago. 1000s of tyres, a few cars and a couple of tons of scrap metal have been dredged from the depths by a couple of dozen volunteers and theyve now turned the place into  a cracking little fishery which is available to everyone for a £2 day ticket.

I set up on one of the central pegs on the main lake, fishing slightly to the right of a big pad of lilys. I used finely chopped spam as groundbait, and fished lumps of spam and 4mm soft hooker pellet on the hook to catch a steady stream of rudd, skimmers tench and crucians. A very enjoyable evening. There are a few lumps in there too waiting to be caught – as i got busted a couple of times by big fish which ran me straight into the lily beds.
Am looking forwards to coming back again.

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