P
Phil Hackett
Guest
I have a conundrum that I would like feedback on?
The situation is this – I fish the River Tame in the Gt. Manchester area during the summer months. The river is one of the improving rivers around Manchester as they all are thanks to the huge work done by the NW EA.
Yes folks I am a supporter of the EA in my region, they have taken open sewers and turned them into improving fisheries. Keep up the excellent work and I will continue to sing you praises EA!
I digress, but I thought that needed saying.
During the summer months there are plenty of fish to be caught in the most likely looking swims. No monsters but its good fun catching roach, perch, dace, chub, gudgeon and minnow on the stick float. Come the winter the situation is vastly different, all the fish do a disappearing act from the whole 2-3 miles length we fish.
On every river I’ve ever fished in 30 years of river fishing, the deeper swims normally produce in winter and I’ve had some good mixed bags from such swims. The Tame is a medium sized river with little flood defence work carried out on it, as it lies in a steep valley with no development on the floodplans. The result of this is that, its river channel is allowed to mender naturally along the valley bottom creating large deep bends, troughed straight runs (3-5ft deep) and riffled shallow areas. My experience tells me that the fish should be hold up somewhere along such a length but they are not. Myself and a mate spent the whole winter 3 years ago, trying to locate them. It became an obsession with us but I have to say, but for the odd fish we failed miserably. We fish early morning at first light, late afternoon into dark, the middle of the day. You name it we fished it. We tried maggots, caster, worm, bread, sweetcorn, the bloody lot and nowt!
Before you suggest to me that certain species (chub & dace in particular) are known to migrate down river to winter quarters as in the Ribble, Dee. Eden. etc. I know that and we even tried the lower reaches of the river to see if that was what was happening. In short it weren’t. The added complication to that theory is that at the end of the length we were fishing is a 12 foot drop weir. Fish migrating past this would have no way back come the spring. Come the summer though, the fish are back in the same swims and catchable numbers they were the year before.
So the question to you is “Where do they disappear to then?”
The situation is this – I fish the River Tame in the Gt. Manchester area during the summer months. The river is one of the improving rivers around Manchester as they all are thanks to the huge work done by the NW EA.
Yes folks I am a supporter of the EA in my region, they have taken open sewers and turned them into improving fisheries. Keep up the excellent work and I will continue to sing you praises EA!
I digress, but I thought that needed saying.
During the summer months there are plenty of fish to be caught in the most likely looking swims. No monsters but its good fun catching roach, perch, dace, chub, gudgeon and minnow on the stick float. Come the winter the situation is vastly different, all the fish do a disappearing act from the whole 2-3 miles length we fish.
On every river I’ve ever fished in 30 years of river fishing, the deeper swims normally produce in winter and I’ve had some good mixed bags from such swims. The Tame is a medium sized river with little flood defence work carried out on it, as it lies in a steep valley with no development on the floodplans. The result of this is that, its river channel is allowed to mender naturally along the valley bottom creating large deep bends, troughed straight runs (3-5ft deep) and riffled shallow areas. My experience tells me that the fish should be hold up somewhere along such a length but they are not. Myself and a mate spent the whole winter 3 years ago, trying to locate them. It became an obsession with us but I have to say, but for the odd fish we failed miserably. We fish early morning at first light, late afternoon into dark, the middle of the day. You name it we fished it. We tried maggots, caster, worm, bread, sweetcorn, the bloody lot and nowt!
Before you suggest to me that certain species (chub & dace in particular) are known to migrate down river to winter quarters as in the Ribble, Dee. Eden. etc. I know that and we even tried the lower reaches of the river to see if that was what was happening. In short it weren’t. The added complication to that theory is that at the end of the length we were fishing is a 12 foot drop weir. Fish migrating past this would have no way back come the spring. Come the summer though, the fish are back in the same swims and catchable numbers they were the year before.
So the question to you is “Where do they disappear to then?”