DES TAYLOR “Is night fishing worth the time?”
Many species feed hardest during the day
MOST anglers have been sticking well to the ‘no night fishing’ rules. And many of them have been astounded that the big fish they thought could only be caught at dusk or into darkness can actually be nabbed in daylight too.
Barbel are a great example of this. Lots of barbel anglers only fish the last hour before dark and then a few hours into the night. In truth the species will feed all day long, even when the sun is high in the sky and the river is as clear as tapwater.
Okay, they may not pick up half-a-tin of Spam or a 20mm boilie, but they’ll readily take smaller items of food such as casters or 12mm boilies. Over the past seven years on the Severn, I’ve taken in the region of 2,000 barbel, all between 5am and 3pm, and 95 per cent of them on 12mm boilies.
Some will say that these are small shoal fish, but I’ve taken barbel to 15lb from the Trent and 13lb on the Severn and Warwickshire Avon during the day, so if that doesn’t prove my point, nothing will!
It’s the same with carp. People believe that to catch proper lumps you have to bivvy-up and spend the night on the water. True, I’ve done my time under a bivvy and caught a lot of carp at night, but I’ve taken far more during the day.
I remember, many years ago, fishing a Welsh day-ticket carp water that also had a night syndicate. It was everyone’s aim to get into that, as indeed it was mine, because that’s when we thought the big ones would feed. But guess what? Once I was in the syndicate I still caught most of my fish, and the biggest, in daylight.
I’ve caught a lot of big eels before nightfall, too. On one water I fished the owner would only allow me to fish up to 9.30pm, so I turned up at 4.30pm and carried on until bang on the deadline. I had a number of eels to just short of 6lb from there, but I never had a take after 8pm. So yes, big eels do feed during the day.
As always in angling, though, there are contradictions, and I’ll give you a couple of examples of fish that feed mainly at night.
On this particular fishery a lot of the pike anglers thought the fish had died because they weren’t being caught, but two of us decided to try night fishing. Sure enough, those predators had learned to feed at night to avoid daytime pressure.
The other example I’ll give was The Monument fishery near Telford. When it first opened it didn’t allow night fishing, which was fine for the first year as lots of big carp were being caught. Then the fishing tailed off. The owner thought they were feeding at night, when no anglers were present, so he opened up to night fishing and was proved right – the fish started to get caught again, but only for a while. Because they were now being pressured at night they reverted to feeding mainly during the day, which was their natural behaviour.
The message I’m trying to get over to you is, don’t be fooled by thinking that big fish only feed when the sun goes down. From my experience they also come out to play during the day!