I love urban fishing for reasons dictated purely by the quality of the fishing itself…and beauty is in the eye of the beholder!
A half-interested, scatty-brained kid once had to join his dad and older brother on a walk to a spot on a narrow canal that ran between the local tip and a housing estate. In freezing winter weather we stopped after a fifteen minute walk having reached a footbridge emblazoned with garish adult opinions on certain local characters and football teams, plus declarations of love, all beautifully portrayed in wonky colourful spray-can font.
After absorbing a little of my brother’s excitement (without understanding why he was excited at all) I still couldn’t actually grasp the reason for wanting to be there, staring at a luminous orange float for what seemed like a very long time and in a place that was – to be quite frank – really GRIM.
My Dad caught some fish no more than three inches long and I saw my first gudgeon and bullhead. I had a feeling of the impossible being achieved somehow, my dad with a beaming smile on his face as we walked back home through the cold and failing daylight.
So, did the urban fishing bug include an incubation period? Of course it did.
Fast forward a few decades. The urban fishing bug had managed to manifest itself into adulthood as an obsession bordering on insanity; and the more this memory resurfaced the more it made sense:
find the nearest bit of water, have a reccie, consult the locals and hit the forums to dig up as much treasure as you can. Dad hadn’t had the ease of the computer to sway the decisions, I reminded myself; his was a ‘chuck it and see for one’s self’ kind of fishing.
With five named local rivers featuring painfully urban stretches, it was only a matter of time before I tried emulating my dad’s search for pike, barbel, bream, chub and some much-welcomed grayling and roach; there was even a brook holding some odd-looking hook-jawed brownies. That ‘grim place’ on the canal really was part of my destiny: the ‘grim’ was my oyster.
What followed was an uplifting sense that thing’s really weren’t that bad even though I had no car, only a second hand mountain bike. As long as I could scale my tackle down to the bare essentials and climb down walls, up trees and back up the same walls at the end of the day and…phew…I’m too old for this…..and still have enough appreciation for the beauty hidden among the “grim”, then every new dawn or dusk would suddenly take on some weird angling adventure. If only I could get to those brutally honest concrete structures that share the same character as, say… Chernobyl, or those places that seem to avoid demolition for so long that nature reclaims them, if only…..then I’m suddenly spoiled for choice and overwhelmed if I find what I seek.
You never know what you’re going to come up with in swims like this…
Let’s now include all the features that some of the biggest fishing clubs boast about, like numerous loud, frothy weir pools, deep outer turns of river leaving long straight glides that are perfect for trotting worm or bread flake; eddies with overhanging trees and dead trees trapped by sediment that are perfect for shoaling up young barbel or large solitary chub. I only nipped out for a bag of chips but I brought my fishing gear with me – that was half the battle!
Possibly the best place I stumbled upon was a deep ravine, virtually inaccessible and seen only by the odd canoeist. This took some planning to reach safely, but wow, it provided me with some of the quietest, undisturbed barbel fishing I’ve ever had, and all in a busy city centre devoid of any angling pressure. With the very depth of the ravine obviating the sounds of the city above I could have been anywhere, but I pretended to be in Dovedale at Lovers Leap. I almost believed it, but there was just the one supermarket trolley giving the game away and stopping my imagination from wandering too far! Urban fishing isn’t really suited to certain types of fisherman.
Some of the city-swims I fish carry a degree of risk on health grounds and of being ejected; all too often there is someone in a hi-viz tabard charged with keeping you away and, not infrequently, stone-throwing kids achieve the same thing but without the authority.
Losing your terminal tackle as you guess the depth happens frequently and the resultant loss of fishing time can severely dent your zeal for fishing in the Grim Zone.
The worst swim I fished went beyond ‘grim’ and I swore never to return to it again, it was that bad. It still gives me fishing nightmares, I kid you not. Every cast, I reeled in to find on my hook not an eel or a bream but something even less cuddly – like a used sanitary towel! The opening of a nearby sluice-gate saw a great shoal of these beauties making a bee-line for my bait and I could have filled a large keep-net twice over. But I did get a personal best.
Unfortunately many urban fishing swims succumb to regular pollution as they are not protected properly – and not at all in some cases. In winter, salt spread onto roads for traffic-safety purposes makes its way into the water system to further degrade water quality. There will be oil and petrol run-off too so it’s a wonder anything survives in these obscure oases. And to make matters worse we have the ubiquitous fly-tippers – domestic and industrial – using our urban streams as cost-free dumps.
Location, Location, Location.
Most anglers I know shun the delights of urban fishing because it’s difficult to get used to fishing within the hum of human civilization and its by-products of concrete, fast food and the stench of inner city pressure. The sirens, the traffic and the occasional drunken football chant or domestic debate from passing pedestrians are additional facets of the already grim.
Fishing unseen by the public is key to the urban angler’s pleasure, his secrets hidden from their senses help in the enjoyment to be had by the urban fisherman. Urban wildlife knows this. They have learned where Man’s limits are in towns and cities for advantages of peaceful feeding and setting up home away from predation.
I have witnessed natural events in the urban context worthy of a Hugh Miles or Attenborough production. Once when turning to collect the lid off a bait box, my eyes met with a fox only a few feet away. For all I knew it could have been with me all the time, watching me fish or watching for a moment to grab what it thought was food in my bag.
Not all urban fishing is ‘grim’! Here you can get a carp with your cappucino…
I’ve watched a mink sneaking up on a duck. It failed and I was relieved. I’ve watched shy goosanders feeding and often witnessed cormorants and herons attempt to land where I am fishing – only to abort their landing on seeing me at the very last second. Surprised as I was, it at least showed a presence of their food source – fish! Many species, out of sight and out of mind, never seen a hook!
Maybe I can interest you in the raw stink of stale tramps piss? No, I thought not. And this is why the true aficionado of urban fishing will always prevail over lesser mortals, for WE and we alone are prepared for such obstacles in our search for the exceptional catch. The urban fisherman must remain hungry for the raw over-stimulation of sounds that urban fishing offers; peace and quiet doesn’t always come into it. Where else could you slide a 5lb chub over the landing net to a backdrop of alarm sensors provided by an HGV reversing into a loading bay next to you? Music to my ears.
To be fair I enjoy fishing in the countryside too but urban fishing can become addictive. I am hooked on town centre barbel tearing line off my reel in the grimmest of settings… empty plastic 3L cider bottles and Kessy-super cans, needles and graffiti are the minimum I require to start me up. Go to Google Earth and ‘How to Make a Rope Ladder’ and see how you can maximize your opportunities for urban angling. I have even befriended a homeless person who was only too happy to introduce me to an absolute belter of a swim in his own private garden under the riverside car park of an ugly tower block!
I guess some of us are just born “townies”.
