Mini Me

Grim is the best word to describe both the weather and my weekends fishing. First light Saturday saw me picking up Phil K for a trip to the Mersey at Northenden. We both knew it would be tough as the thermometer in my car showed minus 5. The constant icing of rod rings and a disticnt lack of bites soon saw us packing up and enjoying the delights of a local roadside “butty bar”. I think we managed about an hours fishing in total but spent an enjoyable morning checking out some new swims in different areas of the river.
By this afternoon the weather had started to warm up, and i joined Tony and Pete on their local brook for an afternoons Roach fishing. The last time i visited this bit of water, Tony found a shoal of roach from which he proceeded to catch a succession of fish between 12oz and a lb. Amazing from a stream so small that i can touch the far bank with the tip of my rod.
However, this afternoon only Tony was lucky enough to find the fish. I managed to scratch out four small roach by roving downstream, but never really got into a shoal.
The winter months are always tough with fish difficult to locate. I’d much rather be out on the bank than sitting at home no matter that the odds are stacked against me. This time last year i spent alot of time searching out new swims on my local River Irwell while lure fishing for Pike. Maybe next weekend i shall do the same, at least i should get a bend in my rod (the bottom again).

Its a fact of life that canoeists and anglers often don’t rub along well together. Anglers who pay for the privilege of accessing the riverbanks are regularly disgruntled by the fact that canoeists often flout the law and float down our waterways without a care for who owns or maintains them.
Many angling organisations expend huge amounts of resources in improving habitats so that fish have the opportunity to thrive and so that they have suitable spawning sites. It irks many anglers that canoeists frequently paddle over these sites as fish are spawning, and that they frequently scrape the bottom of their crafts over the redds the fish have prepared to lay their eggs and for the eggs to hatch into fry. Whilst its difficult for anyone to object to someones right to paddle their canoe and enjoy the countryside from the unique viewpoint of lowdown in the centre of a river, its easy to object to the idea that canoeists should have the right to paddle down any river they like without contributing to the upkeep of that river.
My local river is a different story, after nearly two centuries of industrial pollution, the local authorities actively encourage all groups to take advantage of the cleaner water. To this end, they have set aside an area in the upper river valley for canoeists, and have managed the river bed, creating weirs, shutes, rapids, slaloms and other similar features purely for the benefits of the paddler. I have often walked this stretch, and in the summer its fantastic to see so many people enjoying the river.
Fishing is not encouraged by the council in this area, and many a fisherman has been asked to move on by the local park rangers despite their being no signs displayed to the contrary. However i know that the stretch contains big chub, and this morning i decided to give it a try for the first time. My thinking was that there wouldn’t be any paddlers out in the cold water at this time of the year.
My set up was my usual river tackle, trotting rod, centre pin, stick float, and a size 16 drennan forged wire hook and a pint of mixed maggots. I started just as it got light, at the tail end of a weirpool at the top end of the length, and worked my way downstream past the car park, and as far down as the railway bridge. I caught brownies from every pool, but unfortunately couldnt find any chub. It was great fun as the trout were hungry and seemed to be competing to take my bait. Maybe maggots was the wrong choice of bait, bread might have been more selective when targeting chub.
By the time i’d worked my way down the half mile of river, i had taken over 20 trout. Many of the swims where i only spent 10 minutes, looked as though they will produce some tremendous sport on fly tackle next year.
I packed up at about 11.30 and headed off to the office. I think that I’ll be returning for a few early morning or late evening sessions next summer when the days are longer – and hopefully avoid upsetting my paddling friends on their wonderful playground by fishing either when they’re still in bed or when they have finished in the evening – after all i dont want to upset anyone do I.

One of the many things in life I take great pleasure form is reading a good book. Having been blessed with a rather skittish mind, I find deep analytical thought something best left to others. The study of Philosophy is an area that I could never make any significant contribution, however I am more than happy read a book about it, to let someone else dream up the ideas, and then adjust their deep meaningful ruminations to suit my own lightweight take on life.

Many years ago my sister bought me a rather splendid book called the “Solitaire Mystery” by an author called Jostein Gaarder. The basic storyline was of a man whose wife had run away, and together with his young son, drove from Norway to Athens to bring her home. Along the way the young son, was befriended by a small dwarf who introduced him to a magical world via a tiny book called the “sticky bun “book. On first reading this book it was like reading a modern fairy tale – a modern C S Lewis. I could grasp some of the main ideas within the book, however it took a review on Amazon by a 15 year old girl to put me straight!
Since reading that book, I have read nearly everything that Gaarder has written, all of which tell a story with a philosophical meaning – very often a good story, but I have always had to resort to someone elses take to give me the real meaning between the lines.
As an author, he is little known in the UK but I cant recommend his books highly enough.

This preamble about literature leads me to tell you something about the book I have only just finished reading. It was first brought to my attention by the author of the blog Tamanawis.

“The River Why” is a book about Fishing, Philosophy and about coming of age. A cracking read which I’m not going to spoil by giving you a detailed book review.
The only thing I can say is that it’s a book about a young man who believed that the amount of time he spent fishing was directly proportional to his state of happiness (SOMETHING I CAN REALTE TOO). Ironically, after he moved away from home and into a small riverside cabin to dedicate his life to fishing, he became depressed. After some soul searching he realized that there is more to life and happiness than the simple pleasure of fishing. There on the river he contemplates religion, philosophy, purpose, and love.

This was the best fishing fiction I’ve read in a long time, I’m not the only one who thinks this, as its been made into a film which will be released next year.

Today i competed in my first fishing match for 23 years!
As a regular reader of the maggotdrowners forum, i decided to go along to their Xmas fur and feather match to enjoy the banter and to put faces to names of people i have been swapping messages with over the last 12 months.
The match was held at Pennine View on their specimen lake, which holds a good head of silver fish. However the recent cold snap resulted in the lake having a thick coating of ice, which only completely melted in the 24 hours prior to the match.

In order to have the chance of a decent days sport it was essential to draw a peg with deep water, unfortunately the peg i drew was only 3 feet deep at the full length of my pole, and a lead bomb cast about 40yds hit bottom after only 2 or 3 seconds. Knowing that skimmer bream were the key to a winning weight, my original plan was to sit it out on a chopped worm feeder at distance, but after an hour without a bite, and nobody in my immediate vicinity having a bite on feeder i decided to change tactics. So out came the pole, with a very light float, a size 22 hook, 8oz bottom and a single pinkie as bait. Over the next four hours i teased out 10 tiny fish for a grand total of 2oz’s – enough to come third in my section!! The angler to my left caught 20 fish for 4oz’s to come second, and the angler to my right had a skimmer of 10oz to give him first place on the section.
The winner caught 9lb+ and as expected was pegged on the dam wall where the lake was deepest.
Despite the low weights i thoroughly enjoyed myself, and will hopefully get out again with a great set of chaps when they future matches.

Good job i was fishing the “specimen lake!”.

After a week of hard frosts, i wasn’t overly optimistic about my chances on the Irwell this afternoon. I chose to fish a city centre swim thinking that the roach might have shoaled up in the deeper water. The city centre has produced 60lb bags of roach during the past few winters for those brave enough (or daft enough) to negotiate the steep banks. The swim i chose was slightly downstream from Granada TV, where access was easier, and the banks level enough for me to be able to sit on my box.
The river was 10ft deep only a rod length out, and the swim shallowed towards the end of the run where a new canal lock has been built in preparation for the re-opening of the Manchester/Bury/Bolton canal system.
Using an pear shaped 1.5gr pole float with the bulk shot at about 8 feet and two droppers on a 0.08mm hooklength and a 22fine wire hook, i thought that i should at least get some bites from small stuff. I was wrong i got no bites at all for two hours.
As always, i pack up on reaching the two hour bite free limit, and as the sun was setting and temperature dropping i was glad to get back to the car and put the heater on. If i’d have had a few fish or at least the encouragement of a couple of bites, i would have fished on into the dark, as the larger roach feed most confidently in low light conditions and there are some crackers in this section of river (assuming that the cormorants haven’t eaten them all).
On reflection i think the only mistake i made today was in trying out a new swim, when the freezing conditions meant that the roach were probably tightly shoaled in slightly deeper water a few hundred yards upstream.

Retiarius recently recommended i take a look at a website which allows you to read pdf’s of old books. Using the sites search facility I found an old tome called an Anglers’ Evening compiled by the Manchester Angling Association, printed in 1879 which had a chapter about my favourite river the Irwell. Using the dark arts of cut and paste Im able to share this chapter with you.

“Angling In The Irwell – A Record Of Hopes And Memories by Edward Corbet

Tis sixty years” since, when in my early days,
the idea of railway travelling yet undeveloped
and the fouling of streams comparatively
infrequent, my angling facilities were limited to a few
ponds near home, where, with frequent catches of
the beautiful stickle-back, or Jacksharp, we had an
occasional prize in the form of a dace, or a Prussian carp
perhaps two ounces in weight. The report of such a
catch was sure to bring a gang of fishers to that pond.
As to river fishing in those bye-gone times, it was what
salmon fishing is now to the trout fishers of Manchester,
a thing to be thought of, and possibly to be had some
day.
The Bolton canal was a stage in advance of the pond
fishing. I have seen a row of ten or twelve men within
easy-speaking distance, each earnestly watching his three
or four rods with hair lines and quill floats ; one of them
perhaps with a silk line and two lengths of a very superior
and costly article called gut at the end. These with waspbait,
or worm, or maggot (gentles we did not know), were
successful in catching a few dace, gudgeon, and eels.

But old traditions of some ten or twenty years then
gone, told of good fishing in the Irwell. We heard of the
time when fine salmon were caught opposite the New
Bailey—itself now no longer “new,” but a vanished
structure,—and we were told of many trout and other
fine fish that had been common. Fisherman’s Rock in
Hulme had its history of wonderful catches. But all
these accounts were for a time—say about the years
1820-22—tales of what had been before the gas-waste
was put into the river.
About the year 18 19 I have, from the New Bailey
Bridge (now called Albert Bridge), watched the fish on
the shoals at the lower sides of the piers, and seen
innumerable fish both there and at the packet station
near the old Barracks (then opposite the New Bailey).
These were chiefly gudgeon ; but other fish were seen
rising to flies,—and so numerous were the flies that the
air was lively with swallows and house-martins ; and the
” Old Quay boys ” used to stand on the bridge and whip
them down, with a long, heavy, short-handled whip,
adroitly throwing the lash so as to kill the poor birds.
It was a favourite amusement for us to count the swallows’
nests along the Salford Crescent, and there were two or
more in every window of the cotton mill at the river side
opposite the New Bailey. There are no nests there now
to be counted.
Some ingenious man found out that gas-tar would
make a cheap black paint, and instead of its being put
in the river it began to find a use, and by-and-by was
actually sold for money—a great result in those days.

I have seen the river so covered with gas-tar (the
varying tints of which were somewhat admired as they
passed) that no real water-surface could be seen. But
we heard of the offence given by this tar to the once
famous Warrington salmon, and to the sparlings which
used to be brought thence. These fish became
scarce, as the use of the new light caused increasing
defilement, and ultimately they disappeared. The
demand for gas-tar was not equal to the supply, and,
therefore, a larger quantity of gas-refuse was put in the
river—gas-tar, gas-lime, ammonia water and all, went in.
About 1824-6, gas-tar ceased to be an unsaleable
article, the river was less polluted, and the fish began to
show (especially above town). We school-boys spent
part of our holiday times in going up the river from
Pendleton, and trying various favourite spots with
carefully prepared bait ; and generally we were so far
successful as to bring home from six to twenty fish for
two of us. We usually went in pairs, furnished with
maggots by Robert Ackerly, of Hope Tower, Salford,
and with lines and hooks by Peter Sharratt, Postmaster,
Windsor Bridge. One favourite spot was half way
between Douglas Mill and Agecroft Bridge, where the
water from certain works came into the river from the
Bolton canal. Here we generally caught one or two
” shoalers.”
These shoalers I believe to be the ” graining.” They
are a fine fish of good flavour, like a herring in size,
form, and colour, and not so broad as a dace, nor so
thick as a chub. They are described in Webster’s

Dictionary as ” Graining (Leuciscus Lancastrieinsis), a
small fish found in England and Switzerland.” We
caught them in the rapids generally ; the Clifton
Aqueduct, the channels in the rocks for half a mile
above, and the outfall of sundry tunnels from coal mines
and other places, being favourite spots. We often caught
dace and chub, but seldom large ones.

The beautiful reaches of river beginning with the
approaches from Pendleton by the footpath from Brindle
Heath, near Douglas Mill weir, with the high lands of
Irlam’s-o’th’-Height on the left, the sweep of Scar
Wheel on the right, and the ancient racecourse site
and buildings at Kersal Moor above ; the broad quiet
river before and the footpath through the meadows to
Agecroft Bridge, mantled with ivy ; steep rocks with
trees on the eastern bank, forming a back-ground to the
picturesque Kersal Cell, with its broad meadows; the
whole crowned by the woods of Prestwich and the high
lands of Stand ; these form a picture fresh on the retina
of memory, though more than fifty years have passed since
it was first, and frequently presented to me in all the
varied tints of the season. The yew trees of Kersal
Cell grounds, budding all over with their spring shoots
of light green, backed by the older foliage, gave me my
earliest ideas of the beauty of these evergreens. I had only
seen them in their darker tints. It was only then that
I began to find that not only yews, but many other evergreens,
had more than one tint and more than one aspect
in the varying seasons.
Agecroft Bridge was then a favourite study for painters,
and the bridge was one well worth seeing either from
below or above, from the west bank or from the east, the
west bank of the river giving us a different class of
prospect from that seen on the east. Broad meadows on
the left ; noble trees on both banks ; the Hall (Irwell
House when Squire Drinkwater lived) ; and the hill-sides
covered with trees. There were no boards about trespassers
to be seen, nor even a notice saying, “This beautiful
land on sale for building plots.” Here was the broad
rock on which we often spent an hour, and tried it on all
sides ; in shallow, in deep, in swift, in slow, in sun or in
shade, always with patience and hope, and generally not
without some finny prize.
A little higher up the stream we had steep rocks for
some distance on both sides, and many favourite pools,
runs, and shallows in the stream ; and then we came to the
Bolton Canal Aqueduct. Above this, for about half-amile,
we had again many beautiful views ; not much varied
except by the trees, the river course being very straight
but at the half mile, on the western bank, there came a
very fitful stream from a tunnel through a steep rock,
with a descent of some three or four feet to the river. In
the eddies of this stream, and at its margin, we spent
many hours and caught many fish. It was a sort of
Rubicon, seldom passed, though sometimes we stretched
our courage to go to the famous Ringley Weir. The
tunnel was a wonder. Where did the water come from ^
Why did it not always come .” These, and many similar
questions puzzled us. One day, two of us had worked
our way from the first rapid at Agecroft to this place.

Having had little or no success below, in the numerous
places tried, we had made a push to get here. Arrived, we
found, instead of a rushing stream and a foaming waterfall,
a mere trickle from the tunnel mouth. It was proposed
that as there were no fish to be caught, and no water was
in the stream-bed, we should explore the latter. So away
we started into the dark tunnel, feeling our way with our
bundled-up rods. Step by step we went, in single file,
for such a length as seemed to us near a mile, (really
nearly a fourth of that distance,) during the major part of
which we saw before us a slight gleam of daylight. This
itself was a puzzle, as we knew well that we were going
towards the high lands of Clifton. We arrived at length
at the southern end of the passage, and found ourselves at
the bottom of a deep shaft or well, full of curious and
inexplicable machinery, made chiefly of oak. Long we
looked at it to make out what it meant. Many years
afterwards we came to know that it was a means of drawing
water out of the Clifton coal-mines, the machinery
being worked by the water of the river from above Ringley
Weir, and the whole having been designed and constructed
by the well-known Brindley, the engineer of the then
famous aqueduct at Barton-on-Irwell. On that memorable
Saturday afternoon we got a spattering of knowledge
of this place, and it came in company with a great rush
of water that soon began to flow into the tunnel by which
we had arrived. We, of course, beat a retreat, going back
more rapidly than we came ; but it took so much time
that the water, which had not come to our ankles in our
” up journey,” wetted us above the knees during our
return. We gladly welcomed the daylight as we arrived
at the river side. Four of the six retreated all the way
home, frightened, and indisposed to try more fishing.
Myself and one companion tackled up again, and
before we left caught several fish. The river, in those
early days, was seldom seen by us beyond Ringley ;
but above, it had many beautiful lengths. All are now
marred by some of the many uses to which the riverside
is devoted. In later years, I have seen many other parts
of the river, and certainly few streams have originally
been more varied and beautiful than our Irwell and its
tributaries.
Even at this day, with a little license of omission of
shafts, mills, and other works, or by taking the prophetic
view of some eminent men and replacing the above named
objects with broken walls, ivy-covered roofs and
shafts, with other such poetic arrangements ; and improving
off the rocks and trees the perpetually recurring grime
of continual smoke, clothing the dead branches with
verdure, and putting in a few anglers fly-fishing, the lover
of the picturesque may yet find miles of beauty full of
precious “bits,” or broadening into grand views of lake,
river, and mountain. We call the lakes ” razzervoirs,”
and the mountains are “nobbut hills,” while the river
itself is but an open drain ; yet in a ten miles’ walk from
Manchester to Bolton (by river nearly twenty miles), or
in a five miles’ walk by the brook-side above Bolton to
Turton, or by Wayoh and Bradshaw Brook to Entwistle,
or from Prestolee to Bury, or from Bury to Haslingden,
or branching off towards Tottington to Holcombe, or from
Rochdale up the valley by river instead of by rail to
Shawforth, or along others of the numerous tributaries,
the artist may find such combinations of river, road, rock,
and ruin, with back-grounds of hills and trees, as will give
him years of work for his pencil. With such skill as an
architect is required to apply in restoring a ruined old
cathedral or monastery, he might paint back the views
and produce a Lancashire of a century ago, or possibly a
century hence, styling the picture ” View on the Irwell,
1780″ or ” 1980,” according to his fancy. The river and
its tributaries are really yet worth exploring, even in search
of the picturesque, and many a fall, and turn, and rapid,
give such views as only require the conversion of the
stream itself to purity to become eminently pleasing.
This chief defect, the impurity of the water, is, however,
now so perceptible, not only to the eye but also to the nose,
that it would be advisable for our seekers of pleasure in
this district to provide themselves with some of the
preparations of carbolic acid, or with some other good
antiseptic, before inhaling for any length of time the
odours of these tributaries.
It has not been my fortune to explore the banks of
the Dead Sea, but a sad sight it must be if it exceeds in
deadness the sight I once had of the Irwell when engaged
on professional work. I had to go in a row-boat from
Manchester to Runcorn by river, or by “cut” where the
navigation is shortened by canals ; all along there was
evidence of the direful effects of the polluted condition of
the stream. There was scarcely a blade of grass or a
bunch of rushes near the river itself; and only such trees
as were high enough above its banks to keep most of their
roots out of its reach, and luckily so placed as not to be
destroyed at the top by chemical fumes, had preserved
their leaves and lives. Excepting these, a very few rats,
and now and then a melancholy-looking sandpiper, who,
no doubt, kept to the river side, not from choice but from
family tradition, with an occasional lock-gate keeper, and
those few others of the genus homo and genus equus who
earned their living in connection with the navigation,
there was not a thing with life to be seen. Indeed the
navigation itself is almost destroyed by the persistent
river pollution, so many tons of rubbish being put in, that
the dredging is a very serious and almost overbearing cost.
One of our greatest treats in my boy-days was to walk
down to Mode-Wheel lock, there to meet the packet-boat,
sail down to Warrington or Runcorn, and buy some Eccles
cakes at Warrington. Returning by the boat the same day
was sometimes practicable, but more frequently we had to
return by one of the Liverpool coaches, which placed us
nearer home at Pendleton. On these packet-boat journeys
we always, or nearly always, disturbed some angler who
was fishing from the towing-path ; though, of course,
fishers were more numerous on the bank where they were
not likely to be disturbed.
It would require many journeys now to find one man
fishing in this stream. Even the mouth of Glaze Brook,
once famous for its bream, has lost its prestige ; and only
the Mersey and Bollin retain at their outfalls sufficient
purity to keep eels and gudgeons alive.
About 1825 I became acquainted with practical fly
fishing, and made flies that caught fish. They were
generally a sort of hackle, made of a starling’s breastfeather,
with a body usually of black silk, but occasionally
a little scarlet wool. The first knowledge I had of the
effect of this wonderful art of fly-fishing was on seeing a
man with two flies, at work where a stream was coming
into the Irvvell, about one hundred yards below Agecroft
Bridge. He caught almost at every throw, and often
brought two fish to his basket. He caught some forty
while I stood by, and told me he had over a hundred
they were about two ounces each in weight—shoalers,
dace, roach, and a few chubs. Of course I was converted
to fly-fishing, but I generally kept a reserve of requisites
for bottom- fishing, and pursued my way, with or without
one or more companions, as far as Ringley Weir-hole.
There we generally caught some fish, and at sundry places
on the way we had more or less success ; often bringing
home ten or twelve fine fish, either graining, chub, or dace ;
occasionally only gudgeons and minnows. When the
others would not rise, and we had to try the bottom, we
did not refuse the loach. Sometimes we got an eel, and
sometimes a perch. I have often seen the bottom-fishers
with a good lot of eels ; and once I remember a man
showing me a fish which, from memory, I estimate to
have been about three or four pounds weight ; I think it
must have been a bream, but its silvery-white scales looked
too bright for that dull fish. The scales were large-sized,
and the man called it a salmon ; I did not, but it was a
fine fish, and he had caught it in Ringley Weir-hole, within
an hour of my seeing it. I went to Ringley Weir-hole
at once, and after a patient trial of about two hours, was
rewarded by a settled conviction that there was not
another fish like the one in question left, and that it must
have eaten all the little ones. Yet it was not a pike, or a
trout, or a grayling ; it may have been a chub.
The last time I went to try the upper part of the
Irwell I saw the only pike I ever saw in that river. It
was about twenty yards below Agecroft Bridge, and I was
on a small island of sandy gravel. The fish was about the
size of a herring, and swam round me, looking as if it was
seeking food. I caught no fish that day. I think it would
be about the year 1830. I had before this fished and
caught fish in some other streams, notably the Irk at
Crumpsall and Blackley, the Medlock at Ardwick, and
the Derwent at Rowsley. On a day kept as a fete day
on account of the passing of the Reform Bill, some time
late in 1832, I went with a companion to fish in the
Mersey below Irlam. We caught very few fish ; but we
saw some ten or twelve men at various favourite holes,
each of them with a good dish of fish beside him, some
twelve to twenty in number, very uniform in size, and
mostly dace about as big as herrings.
This is the last of my remembrance of fishing in the
Irwell, but I had previously seen and caught fish at Mode-
Wheel mill -tail, at the Crescent, Salford, the weir below
the Crescent, and various other places. Perhaps about
1828 I saw a man catch a trout nearly two pounds weight
at the mill tail below the Crescent, Salford, and I once
met a man with six trout caught in the Irwell, at the
foot of a small streamlet near Kersal Moor ; but I never
caught a trout in the river myself. I knew by sight an
old man who got his living (according to his own account)
by fishing in the streams around Manchester, I once saw
him at Agecroft, fishing above the bridge, and he had two
or three eels. I had some confidential talk with him and
found that his basket was more frequently weighted with
hares and rabbits than with fish, and that fishing was with
him only a cloak for poaching. About the year 1840 a
salmon was caught, nearly dead, above Warrington ; it
was about eighteen pounds weight. The latest Irwell
fishing I have known was about 1850, when some people
used to fish in Peel Park. They caught some fish, but I
do not know the species.
And now for the future of the Irwell. There have
been put into it, as refuse, several materials which, with
the progress of science and invention, have been found
capable of better uses, and of these I will name a few.
Gas-tar was put in ; it now sells for thousands of pounds
per annum, and forms the basis of many important trades.
Ammonia-water was so wasted, and it is now sold and used.
Gas lime was also freely put in the river before a better use
was found for it. Cotton waste was put in, I have seen
the river white with this material ; we have now a group
of traders called cotton waste dealers, who have an
Exchange of their own. Dye stuffs have been redeemed
from waste to a large extent, but they yet form a great
portion of the river’s pollution. Soap has been very
largely put in, and in some cases profitably kept out and
converted into fine tallow candles and alkalies. Metallic
and chemical refuse, coal, ashes, and cinders are yet
thrown into the river. And last, though not least, the
valuable article called sewage is still put into the river, to
an extent causing a loss, in my belief, of more than a
million pounds a year to South Lancashire. At
Wrexham, and many other places, it yields a clear
profit to the sewage farm of more than £10 per
acre per year. The increase in the revenue of land
so improved in South Lancashire, to the extent of twenty
miles by twelve, would exceed a million a-year, and the
sewage of the town would improve such an area very
materially, without nuisance from over-irrigation. Science
has so far advanced as to show that it is profitable to
keep sewage out of the rivers, and legislation must proceed
to prevent the abuse of the water-ways of the country.
Then we may hope that the Irwell will again be a bright
stream with trout and other fish in it, swallows and other
birds over it, patient anglers not disappointed of sport
beside it, and the poisoned area along the whole length of
the stream restored to its original atmospheric purity.
Smoke may be as effectually done away with as other
wastes have been. Then we may hope also for other
improvements not so remotely connected with these as
may at first sight appear ; and as the filthy gas-tar has
given us the beautiful aniline colours and the valuable
carbolic acid, so other wastes maybe utilized, until everything
is put to its best use; and finally, through the
operation of the much-despised utilitarianism and trades’
profits, we may arrive at the highest attainable pitch of
civilization, when our towns will be lively with vegetation,
our streams replete with fish, the air resounding with
birds, and ourselves living well-spent lives in a well governed
country.”

I hope fellow Mancunian anglers enjoyed reading this chapter as much as i did.

As the seasonal clock slowly turns bringing about colder shorter days, catching fish becomes much harder. On the other hand the cold weather can bring about climatic conditions which can make the fishing of secondary importance to the unique changes to the scenery. Except maybe a dewy morning in early June when can a spiders web look as spectacular?
The fields and trees were coated in a thick covering of hoar, it looks like winter has kicked in early.
A consequence of this it that on the fishing front, finer lines, smaller hooks, and fish that are less inclined to feed have now become the norm.
I spent the afternoon in the icy cold Ribble Valley in the company of Tony. I had another tough day catching only one out of season brown trout. I searched out various swims with a stick and pin approach which might have produced better sport if the weather were a little warmer, but it took until the last half hour of the day before Tony and I figured out where the fish were shoaled up. By then the air temperature had fallen to a good few degrees below zero (minus 5 according to the thermometer on Tonys car) and our day was prematurely ended by our rod rings freezing solid.