A warm welcome to this week’s blog update and I
am proud to announce that myself and my uncle are now the proud new members of
St Helens Angling Club. This licence
acquisition will see us gain access to some still waters but more importantly
for us the association waters they have on the River Wyre, River Ribble and the
River Severn. We hope to at least visit
all these waters during the next six months to get an idea of what potential
these waters have and I cannot wait to make a start. The purchase of this card will hopefully put
me on waters where I can confidently target bigger species like barbel and chub
with a realistic chance of picking up a decent fish either way, good or bad, I
hope you continue to enjoy following us on this new part of our angling
adventure.
In-keeping with the subject of rivers just where
have those three months gone? It only seems like yesterday me and my uncle
pulled out of the car park on the river Dee after catching a bumper net of
dace, people say time flies bye but I have never known a closed season go by so
fast, not that I am complaining of course.
The past week I have spent my time sorting my
gear out ready for the river season ahead and there are going to be some
distinct changes to my river setup this year.
Almere ferry was a popular haunt for me in the past few years it was
good fishing and it didn’t involve much of a walk to the bank so in essence it
was quite comfortable fishing on my seat box but this will change this year so
I am planning to travel light and trot the river stood up so this week I have
been separating my gear ready for our first session out to the river on Monday.
Another big change is in the strength of line I am using, upgrading in strength
from 3lb to 4lb 4oz and this is solely down to use venturing onto the River
Ribble where we expect to make contact with chub as well as dace.
This week my mind has been occupied with the
thought of that first trip out to the river and I must say in this age where
the closed season validity is question I have to say I love the feeling that
comes with that first trip to the river it truly is a magical feeling as you
stand on the top of the bank and look down to the river it really is like
bumping into an old friend. I do hope
this year is a lot kinder to the river man than last year when the constant
rain saw the majority of our rivers in flood for most of the year and they
never really settled to allow the colour to drop out of the river and allow us
to put a decent net together with any regularity. Ironically I say this as the patter of rain
taps against my living room window, fingers and toes crossed the forecast heavy
downpours don’t materialise.
Writing this blog not only allows me to share my
fishing adventures with many people but allows me to have a detailed record of all
my trips over the past 3 years and I have spent a bit of time this past week
looking over a trips from the start of the river season, the venues we fished
and the results from those trips to try and give me an idea where to start out. When the season gets in full flow you easily
forget some of the sessions you have had and looking back over the trips has
gave me some great joy reminiscing about some of the special trips form the
past few years, all happy times and I have picked out a few special trips to
share on this update I hope you enjoy reading them.
Last year’s opening weekend: http://satonmyperch.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/dad-glows-with-pb-river-mersey-bream.html
Pike session to remember: http://satonmyperch.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/first-river-pike-session-one-to.html
One other thing I have been looking at this week
that has really got my river juices flowing is this following Youtube video
which shows Dave Harrell fishing for dace n the River Wye and I have to admit
to watching this video more than once this week and no doubt I will probably be
watching it again come Sunday evening.
link to video; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GPHPpENZmQ
On to this week’s trip to the bank,
Saturday 08th June – “Bream”ing Smiles on the Sankey Canal
Getting the carp quest out of the way has given
me the freedom to fall back into my favourite type of fishing and that is
fishing ponds and canals for silver fish and one venue in particular has
grabbed both mine and my uncles attention and that is the Sankey Canal in
Widnes.
I was brought up fishing my local Bridgewater
Canal with my dad and was lucky enough to fish the Bridgewater canal in its
hey-day when it held large shoals silver fish and a number of large shoals of
bronze bream. Back then it wasn’t
unusual for matches to be held on the canal that were fished by a large number
of anglers, a sight you just don’t seem to see anymore. My uncle also living local to the canal
fished it a lot and although I never fished with him back then just listening
to the stories he tells of his experiences back then you know the canal was a
special place on his heart.
As a kid I always remember fishing the
“snatcher”, a small pole with no elastic that was fished really close in, for
roach, perch and if you were lucky a big bronze bream. The smell of Van Der Eynde Ground bait, mixed
sloppy of course, stuck in your nostrils and it was always bronze maggot for
bait and while my mum was busy shopping of a Saturday me and my dad would be on
the canal fishing and I think the similarity of the Sankey Canal to the Bridgewater
canal back then when we fished it is what has got me and my uncle hooked on
this venue.
We have done three trips now to this venue in
the past three weeks and each time we have tried a different area with varying
depths, widths of canal and features to try and build a picture of what the
different areas of this canal fishes like and this week we kept to that plan
and headed to an area we had looked at the previous week but we knew it was a
fair walk so again our trusty trolleys were put into action.
The walk along the canal was a joy as we crossed
paths with a very protective but lovely family of swans and also shared the tow
path with a few of this year’s young rabbits grabbing a last minute meal before
the busy crowds arrive and it was already clear from the temperature and clear
skies we were in for a scorching hot day.
The pegs on the canal are numbered but many of
the pegs are completely overgrown now so unless you cut in a new peg you are
limited to the gaps in the near side marginal reeds, we found two gaps close
together and began to set up of course it was the keep net that went in first,
always optimistic.
The canal itself is at a guess around 16 metres
wide so with a 13 metre pole fishing the far bank is never an option but I had
a plan and it was to fish under my feet for the rudd and fish a line around 10
metres out straight down the middle of the canal hoping to pick up roach and
skimmers with a secret hope of one of those big bronze bream that call this
place home.
Bait for the session was bronze maggot fished
over Dynamite Baits Silver x ground bait laced with pinkie with the odd bit of
jolly green giant mixed in for good measure. The rig was quite simple and like my river fishing
I tend to stick to one float preferring to learn how one float fishes so you
can read bites rather than having a separate float for each situation. This is probably the wrong way to go about it
but it is what works for me.
I started off on my 10 metre line and full of
expectation I fed and shipped out and to be honest not a lot happened at all,
the place was alive with fish topping all over but the float remained static in
the swim, its tip dry as the grass along the banks of the canal. My uncle also started off on the pole but was
having the same luck as me and was first to make a change and set up a waggler
on his splice tip rod.
He was instantly into a steady stream of rudd
and roach from small ounce fish to the odd bonus fish around 8-10oz. I was unsure what to do but decided to fish
just off the reeds to my left for the shoals of rudd I could see passing bye in
front of peg taking small flies off the surface. The fish were not of any size but I did connect
with one really nice rudd that made the effort of ploughing through the smaller
rudd worthwhile.
My uncle was finding the bites drying up the
further he came off the reeds but instead of recasting and catching the
predictable small rudd he left the line to fish and in bared fruit in the first
bronze bream of the session and what am impressive fish these bream are, a joy
to witness on the bank.
It hit the scales at just under 5lb, not bad for
a canal.
The session plodded along nicely with both
myself and my uncle picking up fish regular and building up a nice net of
fish. Moving into the last hour or so of
the session my uncle moved over onto his pole line and began picking up some
really nice roach so I decided to go back in on my pole line and picked up the
odd roach but the swim was really quiet and it turned out with good reason as
the float lifted slightly and I struck into a decent bream. The bream in this canal are not like your
normal wet lettuce fish you catch elsewhere they do put up a fair scrap and it
felt great playing the bream on my blue hydro elastic.
I was over the moon with this capture as it
topped off what had been a hard session to that point it is amazing how a bonus
fish like that can change your perspective on a session so you can imagine my
reaction when next put in the float again sailed away and I was into another
bream that felt in the same league as the previous one.
After this bream the roach and rudd moved back
in a claimed the area as their own and I picked up a few smaller fish to round
of the session for myself and I was just on the phone to home when my uncle
placed a bit far cherry on top of the cake for this session as he landed the
biggest bream of the session and what a beauty of a bream it was as well.
This bream marked the end of the session for us
and we began to take the pictures of the nets and give them a good half hour to
thoroughly dry out, as we all know the smell of a canal keep net is hard to
remove! Covered in bream slime we had a slow pack away and made the long walk
back to the car.
My net
Uncle net
The canal has been really nice to us and I am
sure on the right day it could produce a really big net of fish. On the day the skimmer bream did not show up
at all in our nets which was a surprise but given the temperature they might
have been taking this opportunity to spawn.
The loss of Almere Ferry on the Warrington card
will leave a big void in our fishing as it was a good place to go when the
river was flooded so I can see us looking to this canal this year for those
sessions when we find the rivers unfishable and I am sure it will be getting a
few visits in the winter for the pike that must inhabit this fish filled
canal. It is great to see a “natural”
waterway so close to a river that is home to many cormorants doing well as we
hear so many stories of the damage being done by the avian predators but it
looks like there are pockets of water in the North West still thriving and it
great to see.
Till next time I leave you with this picture of
me and my daughter spending some father and daughter time watching catching the
impossible, her apprenticeship continues J
Tight lines
Danny
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