River Don, Rotherham

[The Sogster]

Following development of Rotherhams latest flood defence scheme at Centenary Riverside, I decided to investigate the potential of the river access.
Prior to the development of the land it was virtually impossible to get to the rivers edge. I am happy to report that now there is very good access. I am however concerned that this development which is supposed to be part of the towns new flood relief system seems to include planting trees right up to the river bank. This will inhibit the water should it try to overflow the banks once again.

Enough of that onto the fishing.
I arrived this morning at around 8am to find the river very clear and at it's usual low summer level. After accessing the new 'park' I walked up the bank towards Firth Rixon noting several very nice looking swims with deep glides awash with streamer weed. I didn't see any signs that other anglers have taken advantage of the ability to fish this stretch of river, there was a distinct lack of empty hook packets, sweetcorn tins etc.
I had decided that today I would feed liquidised bread and finely chopped polony (with my secret additives). So on my way to the far end of the stretch I threw a few handfuls into several beautiful looking spots for my return journey.
Once at my chosen starting peg I introduced a couple of walnut sized lumps of liquidised bread and a small amount of chopped meat before setting up my trusty old shakespeare match aerial and centrepin with a small loafer.
Prior to my first trot with breadflake I chucked in another walnut sized lump of liqqy before gently inching a lump of flake through.
Before the float had travelled 4 yards, bang and it was buried - a small chub of around half a pound soon graced the bank. This was repeated for the next couple of trots and then the swim died, I introduced another small ball of liqqy and changed to meat on the hook. This did the trick and a few more small chub were soon tamed and on the bank followed by a larger specimen nearer a pound.
This was the end of this swim so I moved to one of my prebaited swims where I had a succession of small roach and a dace.
This pattern was repeated all the way back to the bridge (near the entrance) whereupon having run out of bait I called it a day.
All in all very enjoyable and well worth visiting again, I finished the short session (4 hours) with 2 dace, 9 roach and 13 chub for less than a quids worth of bait and without the cost of a day ticket (free fishing).

 

[dezza]

No doubt that the rivers Don and Rother are getting better, both in my area.

I just wish that Rotherham MBC would think of the local anglers more.

 

[johnnyfby]

Cracking fishing, there are some Barbel there too..

 

[flightliner]

The rivers Don and Rother in Sheffield and Rotherham, once dead now have an abundance of fish species.
A far cry from the days when, if you were to fall in, you did'nt drown you either died of a multiplicity of desieses or simply disolved.

 

[John Aston]

Quite so - I grew up near Castleford, where the Aire was a foam covered toxic broth . Nothing lived in it , or even on its banks, apart from rats. It now has kingfishers, herons and abundant fish life .

I am getting very weary of telling friends who (for the first time) are expressing concern about rivers that it is simply untrue that every river is more polluted than ever before. We have one local action group who have convinced themselves that our river is awash with sewage. The inconvenient truth is that the tests we carry out show very low level of pollutants and that the foam they gleefully point out is sewage is the sort of foam any fast flowing river develops in flood .

Not everything is rosy - far from it , but I do wish some campaigns were underpinned by evidence and not emotion. That would enable an intelligent , targetted approach to combatting the problems we undoubtedly face.

The really odd thing ? That some non angling friends simply refuse to believe me when I tell them that many rivers like the Don, Aire , Irwell and Calder are cleaner now , by a huge degree, than they were a century ago .

 

[@Clive]

Before I came out here I used to fly-fish with a small group of friends on free, urban rivers that were full of trout and grayling. We fished the Holme in Huddersfield town centre and the Calder at Salter Hebble and in the shadow of the dark Satanic mills in Elland . Both rivers were full of qualiity fish. One of the other things I enjoyed while wading the Holme was the historic industrial architecture that was only evident from the river.

Salmon have been seen leaping Sprotborough weir on the Don and their parr are found above Oxspring. On the Dearne it was possible to catch trout, grayling and roach from the same place on the same fly. I also had the strangest rainbow trout I have ever caught on the Dearne. And I still don't know how or where it could have come from. It had a small rounded head like a crucian.

 

[flightliner]

The river Sheaf that gave Sheffield its name was another badly polluted river,
Flowing thro the city that hosted many differant industries besides Steel, most of them threw more of the heavy pollutants into it than were retained.
The same scenario applied to the rivers Rivalin, Porter, Loxley and Rother that flowed towards Rotherham but entering the river Don just before the town.
Little wonder many of our more northern rivers (and Don) were in such a bad state before the nineteenth century had ended!
Today, many of them, collectively rather unappealing to the eye are full of fish of many differant species, where anglers have little need to travel long distances to enjoy a days fishing.
A far cry from the days when they were deviod of fish and anglers travelled as far to the more south easterly fens or further to the north in the yorkshire dales.
But as said I think many rivers are far better than they once were in our recant past.