Joe Farrell with the latest from the angling scene
Joe Farrell
Like many ‘old school’ anglers of today, I still love to visit venues that not only always have a special place in my heart but hold a real interest within me.
Places, as in my case, which are wild natural waters that are favourites and of course suit my personal style of fishing. We will all have our preferred venues no matter where they may be, and whether they are like mine, as a natural lake or reservoir, even a commercial, a river or just a small pond, whatever the venue, we go because most importantly, we simply enjoy it.
Now it’s a thought this week, as interestingly, with great curiosity, I’ve followed the journey last weekend of some of my close fishing acquaintances and friends who have travelled over to Cheshire to fish the lovely picturesque Llangollen Canal at Whitchurch.
With the Liverpool Angling Society away on duty at Wigan for the fourth round of the Winter League, some of the squad members known to me, last weekend, fancying a nice change, made the journey across to this historic area to take in the canal that has a really special, peaceful feeling about it that again makes a day’s fishing so important to us all.
One man, already holding a notorious reputation as a ‘traveller’ on visiting many venues all over the country over the years, along with his old friend, the late Frank Holding, Roy Spendlove from Huyton was one angler who made the trip to Whitchurch on Sunday, to join in on a local open match to pit his wits against the locals and to of course hopefully have a great day.
Roy Spendlove with his winning catch on the Llangollen Canal at Whitchurch on Sunday(Image: UGC)
Known for its stunning scenery throughout its 46 mile length that runs from Nantwich through rural England and Wales to Llangollen, this canal is one that also attracts lots of users and holds many boats on its system.
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However on this one, on speaking to the lads, surprisingly the somewhat shallow canal only had two boats visit the length during the match which made the day even more enjoyable for the keen line up of canal fishing enthusiasts as unusually with very little disturbance due to many presumably moored up given the bad weather.
Pulling hard though, as this canal reputably does, Spendlove had an approach in mind to tackle this one, and the retired 80-year-old scaffolder played all his experience on the day with a tactic set in his mind to fish pole at 10 meters, cupping in some hemp and complimenting that by presenting caster over it laid on 9’’ over-depth in just 18’’ of water.
It was a perfect tactic on the day and on taking an early 4oz roach, Spendlove was spurred on with the quality of the roach he’d attracted to his peg. On then ‘doubling-up’ on his caster hook-bait and regularly loose feeding, he successfully took better roach to a pound in weight to win the match with a great weight on a difficult day with 5.9.8. Wirral’s Bernie Leatherbarrow took second place 5.3.0.
On Liverpool AS’s fourth round clash upon the Wigan WL, going into this one with a 20 point lead on the day, Section wins for captain Gareth Charnock and Gordon Griffiths led the way for the Liverpool squad. Rob Speakman took a creditable fourth individual place as they took fourth place on the day in a tight one with 53 points.
Saints took the top honours with 48 points, pulling five points back on the leaders Liverpool.
League top five: Liverpool AS 175, Saints 190, Drennan NW 194,Matrix LTB 195, Wigan MG 233.