Salford Friendly Anglers Society
The Worlds Oldest Angling Club - founded 1817
Well done to SFAS member Stewart Carson who caught the brownie of a lifetime this evening from the River Irwell.
This cracking 10lb brown trout fell to a gold and red size 2 mepps, and was safely returned to the river.
It looks like a wonderfully strong, healthy fish with plenty of growing left to do – if it keeps growing it could easily go on to surpass the existing Irwell record brownie of 12lb 2oz.
Please click the photo to see the full size version of the plans for our new inner city wetland, currently being created on the site of the old Salford Racecourse at Castle Irwell.
The EA and Salford Council are constructing a new £10m+ flood storage basin, which they say will protect low lying areas of Salford from a 1 in a 100 year flooding event. Lets hope they’ve got their sums right.
Anyway – this new wetland/flood basin has been designed by the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust – and we have had some say in the project – and think its rather good.
Originally we hoped to get a new fishing lake, but that was soon quashed by the planners at the EA – however we all love wildlife and this new habitat area will tick all the boxes for bring life back to inner city Salford.
What do you think about it ?
Went to Nob End, crossed the Croal and then the Irwell, by the canal aqueduct, and made my way down to the river. I have fished the stretch above and below the Bury Bolton Manchester Canal Aqueduct, but not for some time. The main reason for today’s trip was to make my way down river to where there used to be a weir that was taken out last year.
This is what it used to look like with the large weir pool above.
Quite a change
and of course no more weir pool.
I had hoped the the change would bring an improvement in the fishing but the man in the distance, who fishes here quite often told me that it is not the case. The weir pool used to hold a good head of Chub, they have moved on as the river is now fast and quite shallow, some trout are still in attendance, not that I caught any in the stretch in the picture.
I fished my way back up until I was opposite where the Croal joins the Irwell, nothing rising nothing caught.
Where the Croal joins the Irwell I found a couple of fish rising and got one to take a look at my fly but nothing else. The structures in the distance are the footbridge that I crossed the river on, sewage pipes and the canal aqueduct.
Looking back towards the Croal Irwell confluence, looks good but nothing to show, until I was just short of the footbridge where I hooked and lost two fish. Sorry I forgot to say I was fishing dry fly.
Looking back at the Canal Aqueduct.
Up above the canal aqueduct, it looks much better but it is very hard to get to, changed rig to a Greenwells and a Iron Blue.
Where I actually managed to land a fish, it took the Greenwells.
The river is summer low and I would not have been able to access all that I did if the river rises by as little as a foot. The bottom bit where the weir used to be can be accessed from Stoneclough, not that I think I will bother to.
Rain forecast for tomorrow evening all the rivers and brooks could do with a good flush to move some of the alga, Surprised to read that it puts oxygen into the rivers in the day time, but takes it out again in the night.
