Fishing in Granchester

So on returning to Cambridge post-holiday, I was on the scout for places to fish, ideally for free. One place that I had been fascinated with for years was the bridge mill pool in Granchester. This is a real tourist hot spot but it is possible to fish from the bridge. On a sunny day you can see the fish milling around in the medium-slow flowing water which is a bit murky once you get below 2 feet. There are plenty of ducks and swans around as well and you have to be careful not to feed them or attract them to the hook bait.

Swans in the pool

I estimate the bottom is only 3-4 feet in the whole pool. I fished this a couple of times with basic float fishing tackle, mainly puddle chucker self-cocking waggler and the 8lbs mainline reel with 4-5 lbs hook link onto a variety of hooks ranging from size 18 barbless, 16 barbed (mustard) and 12 barbless spade-end. It did not make much difference which hook I used, they all caught fish. The main difference was whether the bait stayed on or not. I fished this swim with bread flake pinched onto the hook. I had to shot this down to make it sink otherwise the small fish would peck at the bait on the surface but nothing would take it. With a bit of moisture, the flake sank and it was hit by numerous fish. The fish would shoal around the bait with the odd fish taking a swipe at the hook bait. This was all no more than 1-2 feet under the water and it was possible to watch the fish taking the bait.

Small 0.25lbs Dace

A few different fish were caught here, some Dace, Roach and Chub all in the 0.25-0.75 lbs range. There were a couple of larger fish knocking about but they were much more wary.

Fat 0.75lbs Roach caught at dusk

One 1lbs Chub was hooked (it had a noticeable large spot on its back – possibly an infection or attack from a predator etc.) but this was lost as I went for the landing net. This highlights the extreme problem of this swim. I was fishing from the bridge, and this is where you sort of have to fish for the shoal of fish, the water surface is about 4m below the bridge side. My landing net handle was 3m in length and even with this I had to lean dangerously to get the fish in the net. I bought a drop pan net (which was really for sea-fishing) but this had the problem that it only dropped straight down over the edge and it was hard to manoeuvre the fish into it, plus the landing net lines would get tangled and in the way. A longer landing net handle is required here but as it will have to be non-telescopic, it may annoy the tourists on the bridge and be dangerous to haul in with cars mere feet behind.

The time of day seems to have some bearing on whether fish are biting or not. It is not clear if it is temperature related or not but earlier in the morning – 10am and later at night, 8pm (just before dusk) seemed to work best. Also, I tried cheese paste squeezed onto the hook and this worked for the Chub. If you throw in a bit of bread or cheese, this seemed to keep the fish interested and bring the shoal around to the hook bait.

It is clear that the bigger fish hang lower in the water and are much more wary than the little ones. Talking to a couple of anglers who stopped by, it seems ledgering with worm is a good way to get the bigger Chub with reports of 3lbs fish being caught. Also, there are supposed to be some big pike in the pool. It would be interesting to try corn or maggots here although, I suspect the later would bag up on smaller fish if float fished on the drop. This will be an interesting venue to fish ledger from the bank. The proximity of the road on the bridge make it a bit too dangerous in my opinion to fish seriously – still with a short spinning rod and light float, it was fun handing in fish on bread and cheese.

Lean 0.25lbs Chub

I did scout further up the river which loops around to a road bridge further along the road towards Trumpington. There are a couple of places where you might be able to get into a clear swim but it all was both very weedy in the main flow and there were a couple of meters of marshy fringe plants preventing setting up on the bank. A pole and a long landing net would be needed to fish these swims. They are likely never fished so may well be ripe pickings. Judicious use of a swim rake would be interesting. One issue is who owns the fishing rights in the upriver sections, the Cambridge Fish Preservation Society claim rights over certain sides of the river leading up to Byron’s pool and beyond.

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