How floats helped me beat Severn
Quality chub give me victory
MY LATEST midweek trip saw me on the Wednesday float-only open match on the River Severn at Bewdley. The river had been high for a few days, but it was dropping well and although I knew the water would be cold, I thought it could be a decent contest.
I drew peg 50, a swim known as the Stanchions where the old railway line used to cross. I’d only ever drawn here twice before and had mixed fortunes on those occasions, winning one summer match with 44lb of chub and barbel and finishing nowhere on the other one.
Although the swim hadn’t produced any notable catches for a while, as soon as I saw it I fancied it for a few fish. The colour was good so the fish would be able to see the loosefeed and hookbait easily. With this in mind and because I’d got a long swim running all the way down to a shallow ford, I decided to go down a waggler route and set up just two rods.
The swim was 4-5ft deep in front, gradually shallowing up for around 20-30 yards and eventually shallowing right up into a ford a long way down the river.
I felt pretty certain that there would be a good chance of picking up fish all day because of the peg length. I was also pleased I’d got five pints of maggots with me because this would enable me to spread loosefeed across a very big section of river, a ploy that has worked well in five-hour matches.
I set up two 13ft Daiwa Tournament RS 13F rods and these were teamed up with TDR 3012 reels loaded with 6lb (0.20mm) Pro Float lines. Too many anglers use mainlines that are way too thin in these situations and leave themselves with nowhere to go if big fish do appear.
First rig comprised a 6AAA DH No2 Speci Waggler with three No4s equally-spaced down the line. The bottom shot was positioned just above a 30cm hooklength of 0.12mm Pro Rig line that was tied to a medium wire size 16 hook.
The second rig was a slightly undershotted 4SSG DH No2 Truncheon Waggler with four No4 shot spread down the line in the same way as the other rig. The hooklength on this set-up was 0.14mm Pro Rig tied to a strong size 14 hook.
This was one of those matches with no pressure so I decided to just go for it and feed quite heavily with a catapult, splitting my bait into smaller measures so I could time my usage. If you’ve got five pints of maggots, measure out a pint at a time into a separate bait tub and see how long it takes to use it in conjunction with a catapult. When waggler fishing for roach and dace, about half a pint an hour is about right for rivers such as the Severn but where chub and barbel are the quarry, this can often double to around a pint every hour.
My first bite, on the No2 Speci Waggler rig came from well down the swim after just 10 minutes and a welcome 1lb 8oz chub was soon joined in the net by two more fish of a similar size. I kept the heavy feeding routine going for the first hour and added a few more chub before bites slowed down. Crucially, none of the fish I had landed had any feed in their throats, which indicated that there were quite a few fish out there.
I couldn’t understand why the bites had suddenly stopped but it soon became clear when I started to catch quality dace. Clearly, the dace were intercepting the maggots before they’d got very far down the swim so I added an extra No4 shot to dot the float down a little more and cast the rig directly in front instead of down the swim. This brought me more dace for the next hour until the bites stopped completely. With two hours to go, spectators informed me that most of the
competitors were struggling to put fish together, apart from Paul Evans on peg 58 who was catching well on the waggler. I knew I was in the race for a decent prize but also knew that I needed to catch a lot more weight if I was to win.
I switched rigs to the heavier No2 Truncheon and fished for the rest of the match with three maggots on the hook. I kept the feed going in and fished with the rig set slightly overdepth. The tactic worked like a dream as a bigger stamp of chub now took a liking to the hookbait!
I felt that I was well in the race to win but didn’t realise that the last fish, a 3lb sample landed just seconds before the final whistle, would give me the victory I wanted. Talk about leaving it late!
My 25-4-0 total just edged out Paul Evans who weighed 23-14-0 and I felt well satisfied wit the day’s work. The switch to the bigger rig proved to be a good decision at the right time in the match. My catch comprised around 7lb of dace and 18lb of chub so the mid-match dace were also important.