Catch A Big River Roach

You’ll always learn loads and be inspired by this vastly experienced traditional angler, who also relishes exploring the latest coarse techniques… with help from his friends.

- John Bailey

MANY of us remember what Liverpool legend Bill Shankly said about football and life, and the same has been true with me and roach, but with knobs on.

When I was a kid fishing the Macclesfield and Peak Forest canals, a two-ouncer was a good one, but I yearned for the two-pounders from the Hampshire Avon and River Wensum that I saw featured in the Mail.

Those silver-sided, scarlet-finned fantasies were all my heart’s desire, the fuel of my dreams.

Of course, there have been other roach rivers in my life, too numerous to mention, but it has always been the Avon and the Wensum that have been the meccas.

Throughout roaching history, they have been the two top rivers for two-pounders. With my driving test behind me, and with student life beginning, I had the time to fish both of these rivers.

In the first of endless mini vans, I was up and down the A338, to fish the Avon, and also the A1067, to fish along the banks of the Wensum.

Two rivers different in so many ways, they were only really equal in terms of monster roach.

I fished the Avon up until five years ago, and I worshipped it, but geography and my canal roots always kicked in. I lived in Norfolk and worked in Norwich, so the Wensum ran outside my back door.

Vitally, it was smaller and more intimate than the Avon, a river that always awed me with its muscularity.

The greater of the two river roach giants, I hear you ask? Equal, in my book. It has been a privilege for a Stockport lad to have known them both.

Ups and downs and ups again

Any coarse angler knows what old guys like me, John Wilson, Owen Wentworth, Gerry Swanton, Dave Howes and scores of dyed-in-the-wool roach men have lost, and why.

But the whole thrust of this column is the potential roach comeback on both rivers.