Living in this area I am very lucky to have three brilliant canals very close by: the Trent & Mersey, the Llangollen Canal and my local and favourite canal the Shropshire Union. All three of these canals have their own characteristics when it comes to fishing, but you can apply the basic methods to them all and enjoy some fantastic fishing in the process.
Enjoy fantastic fishing
For the purpose of this article I decided to nip down to one of my favourite sections of the 'Shroppie' for a couple of hours. The length that I chose was at Croughton, by bridge number 135. Croughton is a little bit further along the canal from the section behind Chester Zoo (in the direction of Ellesmere Port). This length has good parking for your car and literally as soon as you are on the towpath you have numerous features to fish towards, weed beds, bushes, etc.
For this short session though I decided to do something a bit different for a bit of fun. One of my other great interests is collecting old vintage fishing tackle, rods, reels, floats and so on. So instead of using a modern carbon pole, I took a split cane rod of 12ft 6”. I can date the rod, as on the bottom of the handle is a band with an inscription stating that it was presented to an angling club official on 29 September 1948. Assuming the rod was made during the previous 12 months, that makes it around 70 years old. The reel was a relative youngster of about 40 years of age and I used a small porcupine quill float.
