The weir at waddow hall on the ribble nr Clitheroe, used to be in a game fishing club that fished this, had some good days sport here when we could worm fish it for salmon and sea trout.
Took me a while to suss it out, but once you knew where they rested before going through the fish pass, there was an eddy which if you got the weight of the lead right, you could get the worms going round and round it, till they came out of it or you got a bite.
Good fun if you hooked on and it shot of down river, I’ve run a couple of hundred yards after one before I could get below it and stop the mad run, it was always better to try and keep them in the weir pool if you could.
I’ll never forget hooking a really big fish in here early one morning, it just carried on swimming up the river like it didn’t even know it was hooked, it swam straight through the fast water in the fish pass, and up it till the line touched a rock and cut it, couldn’t do anything to stop it, mick had a thirty pounder out of here a couple of years later, reckon mine was at least as big if not bigger.
All good things come to an end though, the fly fishermen never liked us worming and finally got it banned a few years later, I gave up on that club not long after, it just wasn’t the same anymore.
mg:
