Along the Towpath to Wigan Pier ( Part Two)

One of my favourite stretches of the Leeds Liverpool canal is between Gathurst and Appley Bridge. My son and I had gone out to fish the River Douglas last Autumn and had ended up trying the canal as the river was high and fast. That day we only managed a small bream between us but subsequent trips have been more fruitful.
There are two spots that I particularly like. The first is a straight stretch just above the locks and the lock keeper's cottage. Part of it lies beneath the high crossing of the M6 where the canal, railway and the River Douglas all converge. It's like a potted history of transport in the last 150 plus years.

I have fished this stretch a couple of times during the early part of the year, once for pike and once on a windy day in February where I was just happy to pick up any fish I could on float fished maggots.It looks a bit bleak in the photograph and is indeed a strange spot mainly due to the noise from the motorway. You don't really feel as though you've got away from it all when there are articulated lorries roaring overhead. Of course the wind direction can help reduce the noise but when you are concentrating on the fishing it is still possible to tune out almost everything else.

As you can see this spot is a lot more inviting in Summer. I took this photograph on Sunday 15th July at around 6am. With a brief lull in the incessant rain promised I thought I'd make the most of it and try an early morning and maybe get myself a canal tench. As is often the way things don't turn out at all as planned. I set up two rods- one with ledgered sweetcorn and the other with float fished bread. On the far bank is a patch of lillies and a reasonable growth of reeds so I cast the sweetcorn to the left hand end of the lillies and the bread to the right. Within a few minutes I picked up a bream of around half a pound on the bread. This was a good start. I find it really important when using bread that you get a quick result otherwise your confidence in it as a bait can wane quite quickly. Another bite on the bread and another bream of a similar size. I got a couple of little twitchy pulls on the corn but nothing that developed into a full blooded run so I concentrated solely on the float.
Just after 6.30am the float plunged under and I connected with a sprightly fish that definitely wasn't a bream. A brief foray into mid canal followed and as I brought the fish to the surface for netting I could see it was a roach. Not just any roach but one that looked to be well in excess of a pound. With it safely in the net I scrabbled about to find my scales.

1lb 14oz. A new personal best roach and almost a fish of a life-time. It had a nasty looking gash on it's left flank so I returned it as quickly as possible. It's quite a pale looking specimen and quite different in appearance to smaller roach I've caught on the same stretch. Of course this then led me into a panic as to whether it was a true roach or a possible hybrid. Luckily I know a man who knows another who is an expert at identification and he has verified it as a roach.
Not quite what I had in mind when I set out just before dawn but that's the beauty of fishing. I'm so chuffed with this fish and it's got me thinking about what else may lurk unseen in this lovely old waterway. I'll definitely be back to explore some more.