Bradford District Angling Lines

The weather seems set fair for the coming weekend, with only a few showers forecast.

Fishing is becoming more and more autumnal, with leaves starting to cause a few problems for river anglers on heavily wooded stretches, though the stillwaters are as yet little affected.

We’ve had a fair few reports recently from anglers. At Shipton Lake, Wayne Mellor smashed his personal best with a 22lb 8oz common and two other carp, with a good tench as well.

Oakworth bottom lake is still producing carp, silvers, chub on bigger baits and skimmers on maggot, although the water temperatures have dropped dramatically.

Stephen Brown and Bongy Bromfield had a couple of sessions at Staveley Lakes, with the small lake producing double figure mixed bags of skimmers, ide, perch, rudd and some good sized roach.

They came to the net steadily throughout the day, using maggots fished in the margins.

Floating crust produced carp to over 10lb and - after a wet overnight session – they found small roach willing to feed on maggots fished on the drop, with small carp and ide to 2.5lb also taking small pieces of meat.

On the Leeds-Liverpool canal at Shipley, Elias Ames and friend Ben reported a “brilliant two sessions” looking for pike.

Roving along the canal, using soft plastic imitation and hard plastic crankbait lures, pike to 7lb and a very good perch came to their nets.

On the Swale, pike to 15lb are starting to be caught, now that the cooler weather has arrived, with barbel, chub, perch and roach continuing to feature in catches.

Stephen and Bongy, on another outing, also had a good session at Lower Dunsforth on the Ure. Casters and hemp fished in a swim-feeder to an overhanging willow produced some nice sized perch, even though strong gusts of wind made bites difficult to spot.

Roach, dace and chublets also came to a stickfloat fished down the nearside in a 10ft deep swim, and a second rod brought pike to just over 10lb as well.

On the Aire, Chris Tribe fly-fished our Cononley water and reported a pleasantly productive afternoon, though with rather more out-of-season trout than grayling.

Essential maintenance continues until mid November on the main A59 bridge about one mile west of Skipton. Two-way traffic lights are resulting in long delays on the main road, and access to anglers’ parking from the main road remains closed.

However, that parking can still be accessed via the Broughton Road from Skipton – though anglers should take care to stay safe and act on any advice from contractors.

The match programme advertised in the yearbook and on the website at www.bradfordcityaa.co.uk continues to be on hold, due to the Match Secretary’s role remaining vacant.

Any queries, or offers to act as Match Secretary, should be directed to Jim Munden on 07940 814431.

BRADFORD NO1 AA

A sharp frost overnight made fishing hard for many in the members match at Raskelf on Sunday, but Dawid Moska managed to catch 25 F1 carp on feeder to win the Spenborough Guardian trophy with 35lbs 1oz.

Second place went to Bill Scott with 15 F1s for 23lbs 2oz, while Andy Jacques caught a 17lbs 14oz mixed net of F1s and roach.

James Vickerman and Nick Michael completed the placings with 15lbs 14oz and 14lbs 12oz respectively.

This year's aggregate weight winner over the seven members matches is Simon Freer with 83lbs 9oz, ahead of Michael (69lbs 9oz) and Jacques (65lbs 15.5oz).

Allan Allcock is the winner of this year's Knotford Carp Cup with a fish weighing 34lbs 9oz. Richard Wood has won the trophy for Kirklees Lagoon with a 33lbs 4oz fish.

Membership for the rest of this year is available on the club website at half price, while good roach catches are starting to come from the River Swale at Topcliffe and River Ure at Roecliffe as the temperatures begin to drop.

BINGLEY ANGLING CLUB

The next match is October 21st in Myrtle park contact Adi Newman on 07783 332705 to book.

A pair of glasses were found in the car park at Wray Wood on Friday, September 28 contact web@bingleyanglingclub.co.uk for details.

SKIPTON AC

With the brown trout season now closed on rivers, the first air frost of the season now recorded and the prospect of falling leaves and possible higher water levels, anglers will have to turn their attention to the coarse fish that local waters contain.

The main species in the River Aire for the past few years has been the grayling but lately, the chub has been making something of a comeback, with fish over the 1800g mark turning up in catches, along with smaller fish.

Pike have also started to fight back from their present stronghold in the Snaygill Deeps and some very small fish have been recorded recently on Heslaker Lane.

Perch are no doubt present here and there but roach and bream have not been seen for years.

Gudgeon, once present in reasonably large shoals with fish touching the 50g mark, have been turning up occasionally but are still on the small side, judging from the large numbers of dead fish seen in last year’s pollution between Bradley and Cononley.

Dace, like perch can be found in the odd hole up and down the Skipton length but are rarely caught.

Hopefully, conditions this winter will allow anglers to try their luck for these coarse fish species and also provide an insight into just what the Upper Aire presently contains.

The Salmon and Trout Conservation have reported that 50 per cent of all insects now contain plastic and since they are consumed in great quantities by fish, no doubt fish will gradually become contaminated.

Another substance now finding its way into rivers and streams is rubber dust, which of course comes from vehicle tyres.

Nothing has been said of what happens to brake shoe and pad dust, maybe because it has in the past been associated with deadly diseases.

The Skipton Winter League will be fishing its third match in this season’s series this Sunday on the Long Ing length of the canal at Barnoldswick.

On the following Sunday (October 21), the Skipton AA will be holding an open match at Whinnygill Reservoir.