Wigan Trout
There is one main water flowing through Wigan which is the river Douglas. There are numerous other waterways which are much smaller many of which are Brooks or streams.
I heard a vicious rumour of a small brook near my house being home to Chubb in it’s deeper pools, it really is less than a few inch deep in places so I wasn’t convinced.
Armed with size 16 hooks, some worms and a 6 foot rod, we made the long trek to the bottom of our street! Float fishing in the deepest pools of no more than 2 foot deep we could see the odd shimmer moving around. It was not long before we hooked into our first fish, a trout! This followed by many others, pristine condition too. We fished for a good few hours catching plenty of Trout, Chubb and a few Gudgeon.
It was fun fishing though nothing of any size was caught, that said we were fishing in very shallow water. We are going to have a walk along some further sections of the brook over the coming months, it’s an excuse to walk the dog and find some deeper pools.
We have been back a few times now and have caught several trout up to 2/3lb which was a surprise. After doing a bit of research you would be amazed at what species of fish call these brooks home.
A few more species have been added to the list, namely Roach and Rudd. These were a decent size and bigger than we have caught from the local canal.
Red and white maggot have both produced the goods, Lobworm has caught us the much larger fish. We have tried fishing under the float but found having the bait on the bottom gave us more catches. The Brook is connected to several large ponds by small tributaries. I have no doubt that these will contain some much larger Trout.
As the river Douglas has been gradually cleaned up the fishing has got a lot better. More species and larger size fish can now be caught and Trout are returning in increasing numbers. It wouldn’t surprise me to find that the Brown Trout is far more dispersed across the borough than anglers realise.
Tight lines
