Advice for Wendy

The Bone Collector · May 7, 2007

Wendy, the area that you live in produces water with a low ph content (acidic) from the peaty moors and foothills that surround your location. Low ph or acidic waters rarely produce a good environment for producing quality fish.

As you travel south you reach the Cheshire plain. The soil is more fertile, consequently the waters are richer and healthier and able to sustain fish of better quality as well as specimens of many species.

Even further south you reach Shropshire where the land is even more fertile. Here waters due to the amount of natural food they contain could be described as pregnant.

With all waters (apart from overstocked commercials) it is so important what lies underneath to determine the quality of fish life.

Rather than me come under fire from certain FM anglers accusing me of spilling the beans on an open forum may I suggest you put your name on The Prince Albert Angling Society of Macclesfield waiting list.

It is a terrific club with a huge catchment of waters. Many of them hold a wide range of species which would suit your type of fishing and more importantly many are safe for lady anglers.

Check out their website all the info is there.

Good luck BC.

Wendy Perry 2 · May 7, 2007

BC, thank you very much for that information, i will look up the club now and see about joining them.

I never knew about the soil affecting the the specices of fish.

Once again thank you

wend

The Monk · May 7, 2007

good post BC, yes the substrate is very important for fertility, most of the pennines consists of millstone grid the surrounding soils are breakdowns of this acidic rock strata, generally not very fertile environ, and soil profiles,fertile water need high PH quality formed by the run off from Carboniferous and calcarious limestone contents, rock types which you fild in greater proliferation the farther you move south. We also generally have lower temperitures in the North

Wendy Perry 2 · May 7, 2007

BC, i have contacted them now thank you very much!

Wow they have some fantastic waters!

Monk, i never knew any of this at all, some of you on here are a minefield of information!

Graham Whatmore · May 7, 2007

"some of you on here are a minefield of information!"

I suspect you mean 'mine of information' Wendy luv, but its a nice Freudian slip.

Big Rik · May 7, 2007

I like minefield Graham, it gives me the thought that one of the poor northern buggers might go off bang at any point....

Alan Tyler · May 7, 2007

Depends upon how dangerous the information is.

But the point is well made - geology is all-important. Not only does it determine water type and quality, but the industry and culture in which the fishing develops. The industrial revolution needed iron and coal, and where these were found, grimy industrial towns sprang up.
Cotton and wool needed soft water, and ,before steam power, water with a good head on it to drive mills. The chemicals from the mills knackered the rivers... these situations led to those who HAD to fish inventing match-fishing, to inject a bit of competitive excitement into a day's tiddler-snatching.
The entire north-south "debate" is, at root, down to the difference between acidic and basic rocks.

Paul (Brummie) Williams · May 7, 2007

Some of those knackered rivers are now making a comeback, at all points of our compass.

Good point about the ermergence of match fishing within the working classes Alan.

Alan Tyler · May 7, 2007

I'm not sure it's a straightforward class thing... Bazeley, for one was well-educated (I hope - wasn't he a teacher?)and he was the **** Walker of match-fishing in his day; and plenty of Southern towns had large, poor work-forces with nothing like the tradition of match-fishing (until the motor-car became widely available) - probably/possibly because they could fish waters where the fishing was good enough to keep the mind busy without needing the added spur of competition.

As I understand it, the same thing happened in the industrial areas of France and Belgium - and weren't the English surprised to find, once match-fishing went international, what Belgians could do with small fish that didn't really want to feed, and what the French could do if the small-fry were hungry! Zut alors!

john conway · May 7, 2007

One of the reasons I joined PAAS was its sellection of game rivers in the North West and Cumbria.
Wendy you may may also want to consider Bradford City AA they have some good stretches on the Ure, Arie and a couple on the Wharfe and Swale. Email if you want details and at the time of this post there is no waiting list.

Paul (Brummie) Williams · May 7, 2007

I still think it was a working class thing Alan.......some working class familys had members who did good one way or another....and some others were reared in a working class background and prefered that type of company even though they were teachers etc.

My earliest days of travelling to far off fishing venues was with the local working mens club and i think these had a lot to do with it.....and they were more of a Midland /Northern thing in heavily occupied towns......the South was more village orientated.

Alan Tyler · May 7, 2007

London? Southampton? Bristol? Reading? Some villages...but once the "working mens' club" culture was under way, it was more of a northern phenomenon, and must have created a positive feedback loop for the development of match-fishing.

Just realised - most of the towns I quoted were ports, and I can't think of many of those with a strong angling tradition of any sort! (I know the London A.A. was big at one time, but some of its rules - notably the dreaded size limits - stunted the development of match fishing in the south until the gravel pits were dug for concrete and roads, and suddenly everyone was a carper...

Graham Whatmore · May 7, 2007

The anomoly about size of fish the further south you go doesn't seem to apply to the dace though for some strange reason, you could even say the opposite applies. Temperature surely plays a part too.

Not sure about that 'not having a match tradition' in the south Alan I think it was always there in parts but maybe not everywhere, certainly it was in the Midlands. I believe it was a tradition generally associated with working class folk as most fishing clubs were either factory based, pub based or working mens clubs and affiliations, wouldn't you agree?

My father, B'ham born and bred as was his father, was winning matches throughout the thirties, in fact he provided a lot of the furniture, bed linen and crockery for our home because prizes were usually that in those days before the war and just after. His father was a match fisherman before him as well but of course in those days it was trips in the chara, people as you say didn't, in the main, own a car that really didn't happen until the middle to late 50's.

Ron 'The Hat' Clay (ACA) · May 7, 2007

Jim Bazley was certainly a school teacher and quite well-to-do. He wasn't a Yorkshiremen in actual fact. He came from Gloucestershire if I remember but spent most of his life in Leeds.

He was not only a very effective match angler, having won the National twice (the only angler ever to do so), but he was also quite a fanatical big fish hunter.

In fact he was a very skilled all rounder and a good fly fisherman too.

He is one of the anglers of the past I have always admired.

Alan Tyler · May 7, 2007

Yes, Graham, I think that wherever club numbers were big enough to book a Chara, the standard of match fishing shot up.
So, I suspect, did the intensity; not necessarily a good thing... but those coaches must have seen some high powered seminars!

Ron, I've always admired angles who take what they learn in one discipline across to another. Ray Mumford was a big fish angler turned matchman; Walker was as adept with the fly rod or the BAMBOO roach-pole as with any other set-up; the Optimas group used match tactics to catch specimens, and what can't Bob Church turn his hand to?

I wonder how many anglers are also aquarists, and what they've learnt from it that transfers across to angling?

Ron 'The Hat' Clay (ACA) · May 7, 2007

Old **** actually fished a lot of matches, especially for his local Hitchin AC. And when he did fish a match, by golly he was serious about it; he wanted to win and he did so on many occasions.

Peter Stone was also a brilliant match angler before he turned big fish man, and **** Clegg was a very competent specimen hunter before he went into the organisation of match angling.

Ron 'The Hat' Clay (ACA) · May 7, 2007

By the way Alan, I have actually fished with one of old ****'s bamboo roach poles, on the Upper Ouse.

The Bone Collector · May 7, 2007

Interesting Graham raises the point about quality dace, yes many of the colder northern rivers have a history of producing good catches of quality fish and those rivers are far removed from the rich alkaline chalk streams of the south.

Also interesting that a small area of the UK produces huge sea trout, their sizes far in excess of the rest of the country.

These welsh rivers do not produce the food required to make these monsters the size they reach as their weight is put on in salt water. So why is it that these few welsh afons produce such monstrous fish when compared to the rest of the UK...

...something in the water?

Alan Tyler · May 7, 2007

Jellyfish?
On BBC's "Coast" there was a mention of the huge turtles that visit Cardigan Bay, following the vast jellyfish swarms that drift there in the Gulf stream. I guess the Lleyn peninsula must shear off a slice of gulf stream and concentate the jellies up into a soup! The same must happen to a lot of other plankton, too. Just a thought, could ell be wrong.

Wolfman Woody · May 7, 2007

Remember going out of Abersoch once and motoring over a swarm of jellyfish. Must have been a million or more because you couldn't have dropped a lead without hitting ten or more and we were motoring over them for ten minutes or more.

For the best Ph you have to come down here. Water almost like rock itself and much of the Thames valley was carved out by a glacier not that long ago in fact.

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