Darren Cox Roach on the waggler!
Our stillwaters are packed with decent silver fish – go catch them!
FISH such as roach, rudd, tench and skimmers are neglected species on our commercials, and I think that’s a real shame – you can have a lot of fun with them, especially on the waggler.
WHERE TO FISH
Silverfish are fans of features – islands, reedbeds or lily pads – as these are natural holding areas where they feel safe and can find an easy meal.
These areas tend to be shallower than the middle of lakes, and that means using a waggler that creates a minimum of disturbance. For me, that’s a loaded float with no large locking shot. I use the 3g Garbolino hollow-tipped loaded peacock insert float.
In such shallow water, and with loosefeed going in, the roach and skimmers will happily feed off bottom so there’s no room for a clunky bulk of shot on the line. Instead, just a couple of No10s are spaced below the float to give the bait a natural fall. I also have a small swivel to attach the hooklength to the mainline. This stops the hooklink twisting and spinning up on the retrieve – vital when using hookbaits like double maggot or caster.
You don’t need to hit the feature with your float either. A little area of open water a few feet away from the bank is ideal, but it can also pay to cast closer, as bigger fish can often be found here later on in your session.
LOOSEFEEDING TIPS
Silverfish adore freebies falling through the water on a regular basis, and there’s nothing to touch casters in this scenario. You don’t need to go mad with the amount. Feeding too much can draw in the attentions of unwelcome carp!
Little and often is the best approach, catapulting or throwing by hand half-a-dozen casters at a time.
I will feed my main area every minute or so to attract roach, rudd and skimmers into the peg and then hold them there so they will swim around off bottom in search of food.
HOOKBAIT CHOICE
This can be broken down into two types – small fish and big fish!
The bulk of silver fish are likely to be roach, rudd and perch. That means taking casters, red maggots and a few worms for the hook. The head of a worm is also a super bait when fishing shallow, as it looks like a caster but stays on the hook well, allowing you to catch up to half-a-dozen fish on one piece before it needs changing.
For big fish such as bream, skimmers, tench and barbel, something bigger on the hook almost always gets results. Expander pellets are brilliant for bream and skimmers but can are selective, producing fewer bites and upping the chances of a carp finding them. If I were fishing pellets, then they’d be 4mm and 6mm sizes.
However, for a little bit of the unknown I’d go back to worms, casters or maggots, but fished in doubles or trebles – three dead red maggots make a superb skimmer hookbait, and big roach and perch love double caster, for example. Worms are equally good, but I have one word of warning here!
Don’t be tempted into fishing too big a piece as roach and skimmers may struggle to properly take half a worm. Instead I fish through the chopped worm and pick out juicy segments for the hook. These always produce positive bites.