Casting About

I had a few hours free this afternoon, so I defrosted  a few dead baits and headed off towards the Irwell at Agecroft. The river was still running high and fast so I decided to have a few casts on “The Pit”.

“The Pit” is one of Greater Manchesters few gravel pits, dug in the late 1960s to provide gravel for the building of the local motorway network. Its not too far from home, but saying that its not an easy water is the understatement of the year. Its home to some massive carp, tench, bream and pike but their numbers as you would expect are very low. People have been known to fish the place for a season only to be rewarded with one or two bites – however the quality of the fish make these bites worth the wait.

So i mounted a roach and cast around for an hour or so without a touch. I like wobbling dead roach, I think its far more effective method lures as Paul and I have proved to each other over the last 12 months. Ah well today it wasnt to be, the wind chill and frequent horizontal rain showers eventually saw me off.

The windward end of “the pit” – possibly a heart breaking hole in the ground – or if I’m lucky it might give up  a couple of its gems.

I spent a very windy afternoon at Church Gardens in Bolton fishing hemp and caster for the lovely roach which are present in large numbers. The wind was so strong that i couldnt hold anything more than 7m of pole and even at that length I found it difficult to hold the bait still.
Nothing for the first 15 minutes, but once the roach got a whif of the hemp I had a steady stream of bites all afternoon long from roach between 6 and 12oz with most of them coming 6 inches off the deck.
Great fun, and I reckon that it will  be a great roach venue in the summer months when the fish are up in the water.
Only a couple of others were fishing, (sensibly on the tip) and they were catching small mirror carp on pellets.

How big the roach go – I dont know, anyone know if  this water holds a 2lber?

Angling, fishing, you can call it what you like but as we all know – its not called catching. We all get something different from our sport – its a fantastic way to be involved in some collective individualism.

I had a great time out fishng today – I didn’t catch anything but took more pleasure than I would have recieved by catching something myself by watching others catch – and enjoy themselves fishing.

Have a look at Toms Blog  and Nicks Blog and the Salford Friendly Blog for the full write up of todays trip out.

Flecks of gold dust – just like the eye make up on this pike which has survived a recent catastrophic pollution incident.

For the last couple of years I’ve done a little rod race with a few pals to see who can catch the highest number of freshwater species in 12 months. In 2010 I had 24 species, and last year 30. I could have easily had 34 last year but by the time September came I was thoroughly fed up with the whole process as i seemed to catch nothing but tiddlers. Whilst it was initially good fun, I eventually realised that I was missing out on the bigger specimen fish which really give me a buzz.
So in 2012 I’ve decided to turn my attention to nabbing a few lunkers.
20lb Carp, 20lb Pike, 10lb Barbel, 2lb Roach, 7lb Tench (a big fish for the northwest) and a 10lb bream are my targets for 2012. I know venues where these fish can be found, catching them will be a different kettle of fish.

A few of us spent the morning dragging blanket weed out of one of our local lakes – prior to some further work taking place in a couple of weeks time.

By lunchtime, we’d all had enough of the hard graft and decided to spend the last few hours of daylight chasing old essox.

Paul threw out a dead bait – without any success (though he did get one earlier in the morning before we started weed raking).

Adam was working hard with various types of lure, and managed to hook into a decent fish which ran him straight into a big lily bed where it threw the hooks.

Nick tried fly fishing tactics, with this cracking looking white streamer lure – but also didnt get any takes, follows or pulls.

And as for me, I had a rod, I had a few casts of a lure, but was a bit knackered and my heart wasnt in it. I kicked back and enjoyed the chat and the crack with some good pals (well thats my excuse for blanking).

The Quays have been in the press recently as the controlling angling club are giving up their angling rights due to a perceived lack of silver fish in the venue. A very sad state of affairs, with lots of half truths being bandied about by many misinformed quarters.
BBC, Sky and Angling Times please do some proper reporting rather than repeating hearsay.
Due to the water clarity in the quays – its never been an easy place to fish, sometimes you can see them, but most of the time you cant catch them. A little thought about rigs and tactics is necessary to get the best out of this place.
I’m not going to give a list of fish weights – but i will say that there are specimens of all the main species to be caught if you put in a little effort.
The departing club have cited the fact that the place isn’t overrun with easy to catch silver fish as their main reason for giving up the leases and creating a fuss – I think this is a disingenuous statement and my opinion is that a falling membership and harsh economic reality are the real underlying reasons.

Please dont stop fishing the quays – contact me if you’ve tried and  but cant get it right and I will give you a few pointers.
Please dont contact me without having fished the place first!

That said, a few of us from the www.maggotdrowning.com fishing forum had a bit of a Christmas social on the quays over the holidays – and as you already know from the title of this post – we all blanked. 10 of us tried a variety of swims and methods – with the closest thing to success being a dropped run on a dead bait.

Paul and I stopped off for the last hour at Drinkwater Park which we have to pass on our way home – we eached bagged a mini jack pike  on lures to save our blushes.

The missus was instant that she needed a weeks winter sun in Lanzarote as an end to a hellish two year period of commuting to Leeds every day. I was insistent that I wasn’t going to sit by a pool for two weeks and that a bit of fishing kit would be included in our measly 15kg Ryanair allowance.

So i packed this lot 🙂 and spent many a happy morning catching pretty tiddlers from off the rocks in the harbour of Puerto Del Carmen whilst swmbo recovered from her Sangria heaven.
I didn’t use any special tactics, just sweetcorn on a size 16 hook, and banded pellets on a size 14 with a constant spray of pellets or corn raining down around the float.

Lots and lots of small pretty fish, a couple of bream to about 12ozs but no bigguns. I was hoping that I might connect with a some of the big mullet, but the closest I came to a decent fish was when i struck into something solid and slow moving, but which bit through my 5lb hooklength after only a couple of seconds.
I got back this morning – brrrrrrrrr what a difference.

I was recently contacted by a BBC researcher asking if I would do a days filming on the Manchester Ship Canal near the BBCs Media City complex about blogging and angling for BBC Learning.
So yesterday morning saw Nick (Angling For Something), Paul (Salford Angler) and myself tackled up and miked up on the turning basin of the MSC with film crew in tow.
Nick and Paul set up a couple of Pike rods in the hope of a televised glory moment, I set my sights lower and fished waggler maggot with the hope that any old fish would do.
In true blogger fashion – we all blanked!
But at least the BBC now have a record of some of the best anglers excuses available:-
Wrong time of day
Wrong time of year
Water too cold for fish to feed
Wrong type of water
Etc Etc

The guys from the film crew took it all in their stride – at least it wasnt raining.
All day to make a 5 minute clip – which will be available online sometime in Febuary – I’ll post the finished clip up on here (if i like how they edit it).

Theres very little angling coverage on the BBC which to be frank is a disgrace considering that angling is the UKs largest participation sport by a considerable margin. More rod licences were sold in 2010 than the total population of Birmingham.

The saga continues………

After so long chasing just one – a couple of hundred turn up in an afternoon!

This afternoon – I received a phone call from Ian Hayes of the Environment Agency asking me if I would like to be present at the first stocking of Barbel into the Irwell in over 20 years. Would I!!!

I knew a couple of other who would jump at the chance of being present – Paul of Salford Friendly and Albert Morris of Salford Inter Clubs so a quick couple of calls giving the time and meeting place – a few eager anglers were waiting for the EAs landrover and trailer to arrive.

A couple of hundred of these little beauties were carefully introduced to their new home.

The EA are really doing their bit on the Irwell at the moment – its not only down to the DEFRA pilot project – these fish were ordered a long time ago – and theres more to come over the next few years to be restocked at various points along the river between the city centre and Bury.
I’ve spent many an hour (as I’m sure many of you have too) in pursuit of the elusive Irwell Barbel as 100 were originally stocked in 1990 at the junction of the Irwell and the Croal. There have been occasional captures over the years with most now having died off and not many which have bred on.
Hopefully the EAs stocking program will change this, with fish being introduced throughout the system between now and 2014.
I’m glad I was there, if only to see the Alberts face has he released the first net of fish.

These fish will probably disappear for a year or two – and then maybe start re-appearing around the 2 to 3lb mark and bring  a conclusion to my not so vain dream of my first Irwell Barbel. Bring it on 🙂

Overnight rain left the Irwell  with a good few extra feet on, so all plans for kick sampling went out of the window. This left me with a free day, so a few domestic jobs were completed and then an afternoon on the Rochdale Canal with Paul fishing a spot I’ve had my eye on for a long time.
Last summer I saw two guys catching some quality roach from this spot, and I’ve also heard reports of decent bream showing. So I fished pinkie on a size 22 over a small bed of micro pellets – and ended up with 2 micro perch which I didnt deign to photograph.
Paul fishing 10 yards to my right fished single maggot over a bed of crushed hemp and had a couple of quality roach to go with his micro perch.
We also had a pike rod out each – mine didnt get a sniff – but Paul got a nice little jack of a couple of pounds later on in the day.

All in all – good fun – and somewhere I’ll go back to later in the winter when everywhere else is iced up.