FAMOUS FISHERIES
History of the ‘Hotties’
TO MANY, winter canal fishing conjures up frostbitten images of scratching for bites from silverfish amid a bleak and unforgiving landscape.
But back in the 1960s and 1970s anglers in the North West had at their disposal an altogether different form of canal venue, one where the water ran warm all year round.
Among the hordes of silverfish there also swam vast shoals of tropical fish with teeth so numerous and sharp that they would often bite through an unsuspecting angler’s line!
UNIQUE VENUE
The Hotties is a stretch of the Sankey Canal in the centre of St Helens, Merseyside where, until the turn of the Millennium, the water was warmed by the adjacent Pilkington Glass factory. The Hotties was created when the company dammed the canal, creating a reservoir to provide cooling water for its nearby works. This water then returned to the canal through sprays which produced large clouds of steam.
It would be shrouded in clouds of steam all winter, and
with the artificially high water temperatures came a host of unusual canal species.
Carp thrived along the stretch, with 100lb bags in January not at all uncommon, but when your float shot away the culprit was just as likely to be a cichlid or a guppy, tropical species whose numbers exploded after a local pet shop owner is said to have dumped his unwanted stock into the stretch.
The Hotties attracted the great and the good of match angling – the 1982 World Champion Kevin Ashurst, from nearby Leigh in Greater Manchester, was a regular visitor to the towpath.
Those fishing the prolific stretch in the depths of winter would often do so with a frost forming on their woolly hats and eyebrows, caused by the hot steam condensing.
TON-UP BAGS
Local matchman and England vets team legend Danny Sixsmith has been a regular at The Hotties for longer than he cares to remember. Now 68, he’s fished it since he was a small boy, and fondly remembers the unique sport it offered when the waters were still steaming.
“Those fishing in the depths of winter would often have a frost forming on their woolly hats and eyebrows”
“One of my earliest memories as a child back in the early 1960s was catching a load of guppies in a net and an old boy coming up and offering me a ten bob note for them! I gladly accepted and tipped them all into a jam jar he was holding,” said Danny.
“In its heyday The Hotties offered absolutely crazy fishing. Ton-up bags of carp were relatively common, and along with the guppies and mollies there were stacks of cichlids, little green tropical fish with serrated mouths that would often bite through your line!
“I once had 300 of them for a weight of around 15lb. The water was so clear and the fish so numerous that you had to watch your maggot, not the float, and strike when you saw it disappear. The best way to fish for them was to have four or five top kits set up. When one bit through your line, you reached for a spare and got the bait back in so you could keep catching.”
CHANGING TIMES
Carp continued to thrive in The Hotties right up until the main warm water outlet from the factory was capped just after the turn of the Millennium.
“I remember doing a magazine feature on there in around 1999 or 2000 where I caught 52 of them for the cameras. The modern flatbed feeders had just been released, and I tried them on the Hotties. It was ridiculous – I could barely keep a bait in the water!” Danny added.
In the following few years, as the water began to cool, the carp gradually disappeared and the tropical fish soon died off, but that’s not to say that the fishing went downhill – it just reverted to a more traditional canal venue, albeit one with a huge head of silverfish.
“The stretch has always held tons of good roach and skimmers,” said Danny, “and often when you put in a pot of worms they’ll appear like piranhas and hoover up all the feed. To this day it’s still a brilliant silverfish venue. When we held the St Helens Canal Champs on there last September, in between lockdowns, I won with 17lb of roach, and the match prior to that was won with 20lb of skimmers. I had an even better mixed net of 24lb soon after, so the fishing is still fantastic, all year round!”