Can rod compete with pole?
I FISH a complex of lakes using the waggler, but when an angler next door to me fishes the long pole, I struggle to catch while he does! I don’t want to invest in a pole, so how can I carry on catching in this situation?
Mike Fielding, via email
IF YOU were catching beforehand, this suggests your tactics and feeding are not wrong – but the pole offers much better presentation and accuracy and more often than not will outfish the float, like-for-like.
The only thing to do here is to try and get your own piece of water, and that means fishing where the pole anglers aren’t.
With a rod and line you can cast a long way, so throw the float or even a feeder way past the pole lads into a part of the lake that no-one else is fishing.
This will allow you to draw in fish from further out, and when they arrive, they will find only your feed and hookbait. You could also do the opposite and fish closer in, inside where the pole anglers are, but this is unlikely to work until later in the day when carp and tench move close to the margins.
“Throw a float or feeder into a part of the lake that no-one else is fishing”