A Salford Fishing Lad: My second Fishing Trip

Well today (13th April 2022) I decided to fish on Bowker Vale in Blackley, another of Broughton Anglers waters. I remembers many years ago there were two waters owned by Bowker Vale Anglers and the waters were well known for their Chub, which is a bit more unusual for a stillwater.

There were once two waters, a lower lake and a upper lake. The lower lake is no longer, and is all but filled in apart from a small part. But the upper lake is still there and is a lovely little water.

Bowker Vale.

I had no idea what to expect fish wise, so I went armed with two rods. One being my match rod, fished with 4lb line and size 14 hook, the other rod I fished Carp style, 11 ft Avon rod with optonic bite alarm and swinger bite indicator.

For bait I planned to use Maggot on the Match Rod and changing to Sweetcorn when needed. As I fished I soon found out there seemed to be a never ending supply of small Roach. So I would change to sweetcorn to slow bites down and hopefully catch a better specimen or two.

On the Carp rod I was trying something partly new, for hook bait i was using Broad Beans, which i have used before many times. But I decided to add boiled hemp and crushed broad beans as a ground bait. I first tried to use a blender to break the beans up, but it turned to a mush, so I chopped the remaining beans. Next time I will chop them instead, because a mush just does not work.

For ground bait I have been using a worm/hemp mix, with added crushed hemp and my own boiled hemp, and as an added attracter I save the water I boil the hemp in and add it to the ground bait.

So firstly I set the carp rod up, I used a simple running lead and a 6 inch hook link with a number 6 hook, the bait went on the hook. Line was 6lb.

Carp Rod

Lift Float set

Then I set the match rod up. Simple Lift waggler and started of with maggots. Bites soon arrived and I was catching roach after roach. There seemed to be loads in my swim, so I changed to sweetcorn in the hope of picking up a nice specimen. A few bigger ones came along plus the odd Rudd or two, but nothing major. I kept changing from Corn to Maggot throughout the day.

One of the few Rudd i caught.

In the afternoon the bailiff was stood chatting me as my Carp rod suddenly sprung into life with a screaming run. After a short battle in came my first Carp of the day, at a guess it looked around the 8lb mark.

First Carp around the 8lb mark.

Then around an hour later I had a bite to corn on the match rod, and I struck into a lump that soon shown me who was in charge! It just would not come to the surface. My match rod was at full curve, and using 4lb line I had to go easy, but sometimes this fish pulled everything to the limit. The fight must have been 5 to 7 minutes long, and I was getting desperate to get it into the net. But after 5 minutes the fish had still not shown itself proper and I was thinking its a carp or a very big Tench! But when it clearly came to the surface it was another carp. I was so relived to finally get it into the net, because I really didn't think the hook would last much longer.

Anyway it was a bigger carp, which I weighed and it was just over 10lb. The rest of the day was back to Roach and Rudd.