City Fishing

The canals of Manchester are home to many things. I’ve seen beer cans, shopping trolleys, crisp packets, shoes, drunk people and lots more. One would imagine bodily fluids make up a significant percentage of the murky waters, particularly in the areas where Canal meets city centre and acts as a nice thoroughfare, a relaxing vista or a conveniently secluded place for a post-club piss/shag. You would perhaps not expect large, apparently healthy fish to therefore be habiting such stretches of canal. They’d prefer a nice picturesque bit out in Marple or the countryside somewhere, right? Not so, as recently proved by a young fisherman who decided to ‘stick a line in’ (that’s proper fishing talk that is) behind Sainsbury’s on Oxford Road and found this thing hungry for his bait:


That’s a big fish. One can’t help wondering that perhaps the city centre diet fed into the canal is helping such beasts thrive. Instead of insects and water grubs (or whatever it is fish eat) these monsters are surviving on discarded kebabs and burgers. For all we know, that pike might be one of the small ones.