Bishops mill more populary known as "The Tunnel" River Wear Durham now redundant but missed by all who really new its true potential,i was never skint as long as the sea trout and salmon were running the river wear,
Before they put a fish pass on the weir below framwellgate dam (the ice rink weir) the very last of the weirs,fish used to congregate by the 100s in there,as that was the strongest current on the river,so the fish salmon and trout used to go in there but never really came out or could get any further up as it was totally impassable to anything,but how ever if icey smith turned off the turbines which controled it they moved out back in to the open river or if the river flooded they came back into the river,dead easy turn off the flow and they were in the main river turn the tunnel back on and thety were back in there.
When i first went in there very ilegal of course,i used a ABU 443 Atlantic Zoom spinning rod comboed with a cardinal 66x some tackle for a 13 year old at the time,we used to foul hook them one a chuck anything from 2lbs to 27 lbs.
Later on in life we were influenced from a tv documentry about comercial salmon fishing in ireland,old guys were stood near a race of fast water below a weir and had giant landing nets in the water walking with the pace of the river,they were getting 3+ fish at a time,so we adopted the idea.
We instantly done very very well,one night the month when the nra were upgrading the fish pass(fish counter) on the river wear at durham 1995 i think,the wear came in to flood and it was the first big water for ages,when the water dropped to a decent/safe level for wadeing we were in the tunnel instantly with some help from a local security gaurd!!!!! we had on our first night 273 fish between 8 and 27 lb and a couple of small 3lb trout which were our first fish of the night after that we only kept salmon and trout of about 8lb +,180 odd sea trout and the rest salmon,night 2 we took about the same again but this time only 60 odd salmon and the rest trout,night 3 produced about 3 salmon and 160 odd sea trout-this was heaven as far as i was concerned at the time.
Please dont critisise me for my actions from years ago this wasnt and isnt sport of any description and these days im a changed person as far as comercial salmon poaching goes-been out the game for some years now
Topic: Post your pics here (PB) Fotos or anything fishy!!!!!!! (Read 1348 times)
