I had a short couple of hours on my local river this afternoon, and found the water levels very low. I fished what has recently become my favoured swim, and after a slow start caught some small roach, chub and gudgeon – standard fare for this stretch of the river. About an hour into the session, a large pike made an attempt to snatch one of the roach as i was landing it, and afterwards the swim died.
I kept up my feeding rate, with a dozen maggots every cast and was rewarded after about half an hour when my float buried and i struck into a fish which stripped off 20 yds of line on its first run. The lovely brownie above graced the net about 5 minutes later. I was really pleased to land this fish after losing the last good trout i hooked into here. However i estimate this fish to be less than half the size of the one i lost a couple of weeks ago.
Am now looking forwards to my carp fishing trip to Shropshire with Matthew.
manchester fishing Irwell Ribble Trout
Lovely Brownie Mike, well done .:)