With a birthday party to attend on Saturday night our chosen fishing venue would have to be very local and would unfortunately only be for a few hours. I had on returning back home form a trip to Cicily mill the previous week stumbled across a length of the bridgewater canal close to Daresbury Labs with a nice lay-by close to the canal to park the car, it fitted all the criteria and this is where we decided to visit on Saturday.
As luck would have it there was a thread posted on the Warrington Anglers message board about this stretch, with an angler from Wales looking for a decent stretch of canal to fish, the response to his question as follows only wet my appetite further:
"down the middle lay on 6 inch with red maggot or caster, roach,perch,bream,skimmers,chub and pike.early morn or evening, plenty boat traffic at w/c ends although it still fishes. give it try you may be surprised what you can get out."
Friday night and thunderstorms overhead lay seeds of doubt about what the mother nature had in store for us the next day. A nice early wake up call and we found ourselves parked up in the lay by at around 6am, with the weather clear and a lovely view of Runcorn greeted us.
My plan of attack was to leave the feeder at home and concentrate on the margin pole fishing down the middle track over depth, following the advice from the forum, i feel sometimes i take to many options with me and find throughout the day i swap and change quite a bit and in the end do neither justice, while my dad decided on using his float rod.
We had a good look at both stretches left and right from the bridge, to the right was a very tempting reed bed which would mean the track left by the boats would be alot closer in, but it was very open and with a stiff breeze already blowing it was only going to get worse so we settled down to the left of the bridge opposite some small reeds.
The swim:
The fishing from the off was difficult with the tow on the canal being so strong it took a while for us both to get the depth and shotting pattern right, still it was good to back fishing a canal i had fished so much as a kid. My dad was first to catch and a surprise capture it was, a gudgeon, a fish we used to catch so much on the runcorn old town stretch but due to the increase in jack pike a fish that has been missing from catches in recent years.
The fishing, now an hour in was slowly getting better with small skimmers and roach coming with great regularity, nothing to any size but kept the float going under, every so often a plump gudgeon would make an appearance and it was no surprise to see the lonely figure of a heron patrolling the tow path a hundred yards down the path, try as i did to get a picture he was always one step ahead of me. We were however lucky enough to be graced with the sight of a very large family of ducklings.
Ducklings:
The fishing continued to be consistent but none of the larger bream or chub made the appearance i had hoped for and around 10 am the weather changed dramatically with the wind swirling and black clouds creeping upon us, the eventual downpour came and it rained and it rained and rained, although this didn't seem to stop the ever enthusiastic barges form ploughing through.
To wet even for the ducks:
With the rain the swim just died completely , i think there is alot of truth in the thought that the rain messes with the fishes lateral line senses but my view is that the noise made by bait going into the water has alot to do with attracting fish into your swim and when it rains the noise of the bait going in is drowned out a bit, there are alot of theories out there and compared to some Ive heard mine is at least logical.
The rain eventually stopped and it gave us a chance to pack up and get the stuff in the car, the net of fish although not massive was hard earned and it is a venue we will be visiting again as i think it has some potential.
Net of fish:
Next week, weather permitting will see us visiting Rixton or Woodshaw i think, I'm desperate to see what this pole can do with a decent tench the target.
Tight Lines
Danny
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