Fly Fishing in Lancashire

Lune Rivers Trust manages Halton Top, Halton Lower and Skerton beats near Lancaster for salmon and sea trout, with brown trout at Skerton. Permits are booked by the day on the Trust’s iBookfishing calendar, which shows how many are left on each date. Halton Top has twelve rods, Halton Lower eight and Skerton six. The Trust doesn’t publish day prices on its beats page, so look at the calendar. Halton Top is salmon fly and artificial lure only until 16 June. Halton Lower is fly only before 16 June, and after that fly only unless the water is over 15 inches on the Halton Toll Bridge gauge. Ribble Rivers Trust runs the Angling Passport: tokens bought online, valid for 14 days from purchase and used once, on beats that are all catch and release. Bashall Brook is 0.6 miles, Bottoms Beck above Stocks Reservoir is 2.2 miles of fly only wild brown trout water, and Colne Water runs five miles through Colne to Barrowford. The Loud is six miles in the Forest of Bowland, with brown trout, grayling and the odd sea trout. Mitton, where the Calder joins the Ribble, is 1.5 miles with one token for brown trout and coarse fish and another for salmon and sea trout. No price is published for any of them. Bottoms Beck and Colne Water are shut from 1 October to 14 March, and the Trust suggests 7 or 8 foot rods of 3 or 4 weight on Bottoms Beck.

Three other day tickets are published. Lancaster and District Angling Association sells weekday tickets on its Caton beat of the Lune: £20 from 1 February to 31 August and £30 from 1 September to 31 October, booked online and valid from 8am to 10pm. Every salmon must be returned alive, and spinning and worm are only allowed above 1 ft 6 in on the Caton gauge. Prince Albert Angling Society sells Lune tickets at Caton for £15, or £7 for under 16s, from Woodies Café on Low Road, Halton. At Ribchester, about 350 yards of the Ribble in the village is sold by Ribchester and District Angling Club for cash at the SPAR: £12 a day for salmon and sea trout, £8 for coarse and trout.

The rest is membership. Lancaster and District has five miles of the Lune in three beats, Aughton, Caton and Claughton, at £210 a year for local members and £235 for associates, plus a joining fee equal to a year’s membership. Applicants need a proposer and a seconder who are officers of an existing angling club. On the Ribble and Hodder, Ribblesdale Angling Association has a waiting list, Mid Ribble Angling Society caps membership at 80, and Clitheroe Anglers Association has about 50 members and almost four miles at Grindleton, strictly fly only. Whitewell Fishing Association holds about 7.5 miles of the Hodder with 36 named pools, where sea trout arrive from late May and salmon from September. Lancashire Fly Fishing Association limits membership to 118. Wyresdale Anglers has ten miles of the Wyre in ten beats, each reserved for a single rod.

On the stillwaters, Bank House Fly Fishery at Caton is a 2.5 acre lake with twelve islands. Tickets run from £20 for four hours of catch and release to £46 for twelve hours and four fish. Upper Roddlesworth, 24 acres at Abbey Village, sells an adult day ticket online at £20 for two fish, then catch and return. Ogden, Churn Clough, Dean Clough and the Wyresdale lakes are members only. Ogden’s full membership is £170 plus an £85 joining fee, and Churn Clough, 16 acres and fly only, is £198.

It suits an angler after a day on the lower Lune or a wild beck on a short rod, who doesn’t mind that most of the Ribble is club water.