A magnet fisherman from Bradford caused houses and businesses to be evacuated and sparked four hours of travel chaos after pulling a WW2 bomb from a canal.

Nick Lee, 49, sparked mass panic and a major police operation when he pulled the 18lb shell from the Rochdale Canal in Newton Heath, Manchester.

The father-of-two cast his rope in the water at 7am on Friday morning hoping for a relaxing morning taking part in his favourite hobby.

But less than an hour later, he was on the phone to the police informing them of his discovery.

A video shows Nick holding the item up to the camera and saying: "Guys, what on earth is that? I think I've found a bomb."

Emergency services flooded the scene and the Army's bomb squad - the Explosive Ordnance Disposal - were called to secure the site.

A nearby factory was evacuated, roads were closed and trains disrupted for more than four hours while experts investigated the shell.

Staff at businesses in the area could not get into work due to the road closures and a nearby bakery could not retrieve deliveries.

Nick, who always take any scrap metal he fishes home with him, said: "It was a nightmare, there is a bakery down there and all the wagons could not get through to deliver.

"I had to stand in the road and turn them round.

"They closed all the street down, they needed PCSOs to block the streets off as people were just ignoring the cordon and walking past.

"At one point, they even used my car to block the road to stop vehicles coming down.

"The police were perfect with me, they said it wasn't my fault and I did the right thing by putting it against a wall and calling them."

Nick, from Bradford, West Yorks., films his fishing expeditions and captured the carnage he caused on camera.

After pulling the bomb out of the water, he called a fellow magnet fisher who collects ordnance who told him to put it in a safe place, call the cops and retreat to safety.

Nick tells the camera: "The advice I've got is to ring and run and that's what I'm going to do."

He placed the bomb next to a bridge wall over the canal to ensure that if it was live, any blast would only travel in one direction.

He added: "I'd pulled out a manky old bike and few metal bars, then I heard a few clinks and then I felt something really heavy.

"I knew it was something big, but my eye was caught by a shiny builder's tape measure that was stuck to the other side of the magnet.

"When I pulled the tape measure off, I saw it was a bomb on the magnet.

"I rang my mate who knows about ordnance, he said to send him some pictures and he told me to get away from it as soon as I could.

"He said to put it against the wall because that way, if there is a blast, it will only go one way.

"Some people put it in a bucket of water if it has just come out of water, to keep it airtight.

"But last time I did that, they took my bucket and I'm a Yorkshireman, I paid for the bucket and I didn't want to lose it."

After a tense wait, disposal experts found to be a dud and it was taken away by the Army.

Nick added: "They x-rayed it and declared it inert and the bomb squad took it away.

"They always take them away so that they don't end up back in the canals and they have to come out and do all that again a few weeks later."