Improve Your Coarse Fishing (UK)
Have you had your five a day?
Editor in Chief Steve Fitzpatrick calls on anglers to find an ‘aquarium swim’ on their local river
WHEN I was a kid I used to fish knockup matches on the River Dee at Eccleston, near Chester, and would always dream of drawing the ‘aquarium’ peg. For some reason this spot, narrower and more difficult to sit in than the surrounding swims, rarely won any matches or produced specimen fish. So why would I want to fish it? For me, it was all about variety – you didn’t know what the next dip of your waggler, stick float or long-lined pole rig would bring. One moment you’d be catching roach and the next you’d hook a perch, eel, dace, bream, gudgeon, pike or, if the tide had been particularly high, a small flatfish. Fast forward many years and a move from the North West to Peterborough and Angling Times saw me living too far away to fish the spot on a regular basis. I secretly craved to find a similar swim locally. Well, I might just have found it and I’ve been filling my boots with barely another angler in sight, on a stretch that’s free fishing and open to all. Like most of our running waters, my local River Nene suffers from the big-fish, single species syndrome which has swept the country as anglers target the growing populations of barbel. But there is so much more to our rivers than individual fish, and I feel that anglers are missing out on a great fishing experience by being blinkered.
So, I’ve launched an exciting new campaign for all anglers – go catch your five a day! I’m calling on you to get out and catch just five of those forgotten fish – roach, dace, skimmers, perch, gudgeon, bleak, pike, chub, whatever you’ve got in your river – in one quick trip. Trust me, this challenge will help you rediscover the joy of fishing.
How to do it
Trying to catch five species from the same swim is not without its challenges. First, location is crucial and it tends to be those middle reaches of rivers which offer the best potential thanks to their features, depths, variety and abundance of silverfish species. I look for swims that offer a bit of pace, a slack area, and a few features such as overhanging trees and weedbeds – all fish-holding spots – and then spend time properly plumbing up. The swim I’m fishing today is 9ft deep for most of the run downstream, but there’s also a spot which is just over 10ft, and this hole always holds perch and skimmers. If I hadn’t have plumbed up properly I wouldn’t have found it.
The right tackle
The great thing about this challenge is that you don’t need a massive amount of gear. When I started my five a day challenge a few months back, I took a long hard look at the piles of gear I was taking to the bank, and started cutting back to the essentials. All my tackle fits inside one of the smallest seatboxes you’ll find (it cost £19.99!). I carry a couple of ready-made rods in a sleeve, and a landing net, and my bait goes in a carrier bag – it’s like starting fishing as a kid again! Most river anglers swear by 14ft rods but some of the swims I fish are proper ‘birdcages’ with overhanging trees. On these I tend to use a two-piece float rod of 12ft. This is quick on the strike yet has a soft enough tip to protect lighter hooklengths and prevent bumped fish. The 14ft rod is teamed with a 4000-sized reel and the 12ft with a 3000 loaded with 4lb mono.
Get on the float
In my opinion, the best way to search a swim is with a float, and picking the right type is crucial. The River Nene isn’t renowned for ripping through at great pace and more often than not it’s very clear, so you can often find yourself having to start by fishing a longer way down your swim – up to 20m or more – at the start. That means you need a float that’s sensitive and with a decent top you can see at range. I’ve been using a new one from river master Dave Harrell’s range. It has an unmissable bristle inside a decent shoulder so it gives me great bite detection, but won’t get dragged under as the hookbait trips over the top of a weedbed or along the bottom. My shotting pattern is simple, with a bulk of No.4 shot and a few No.6 or No.8 droppers, depending on float size, to a 6in hooklength of 2lb 8oz. I like to switch baits and I can’t be bothered changing hook patterns to find the perfect maggot hook or ideal hemp hook so opt for an all-rounder. The size 16 Drennan Silverfish Maggot is a light hook which packs bags of power, and it seems to take hold well, even with hard-mouthed species such as perch.
Baits – what to take
All fish love maggots, so two pints of red maggots is first on my short bait list, along with a pint of casters and a pint of hemp. And that’s it. The permutations of hookbaits from these
three will cover you for just about anything that swims – single and double live or dead maggots for silvers, bunches of reds for perch, single and double caster for chub, and the old favourite of hemp for roach. These baits all behave differently in the water and you can use this to your advantage when it comes to feeding your swim. Hemp sinks faster than casters and maggots and you can help concentrate fish in front of you by feeding these baits in different amounts and varying the spots where you throw them in. Most rivers, the Nene included, can often run clear and on some days I can see the bottom in 9ft of water. For that reason, to kick off, I like feeding dead maggots quarter way down the swim in a bid to bring those spooked fish back upstream. Once I start getting bites within a few metres of the rig going in I’ll try to concentrate them by feeding the heavier live maggots, hemp and casters. In coloured water it’s less of a problem and I feed to the type of fish I’m trying to catch to complete my ‘five’.
One bait, six fish
Accidentally picking up the wrong box of hooklengths before one trip, I stumbled upon fishing banded casters on the river. Normally used for fishing pellets on commercials, you may think that using eyed hooks with a hair-rigged bait band on the end would be ridiculous on rivers but, in my brief experiment with the set-up, I found I could catch up to six fish on a single caster without it being crushed. It also seemed to single out the bigger dace, and it certainly made a big difference when shoals of annoying tiny bleak made their way to the loosefeed.
Could I get my five a day?
Balancing your feeding and the depth you’re fishing at throughout your session will help you catch five species in a day. I started by feeding red maggots halfway down the swim and running the rig at full depth as far as the next peg downstream, looking to catch an early dace or chublet. At least, that was the plan. As I lay in my rig, a tiny perch of around six ounces snaffled two red maggots. I hadn’t seen the bite but I decided it would still count! This time I doubled the amount of feed and dropped in the rig further upstream than before (still downstream of my position) and got my first clean run through. Holding the rig back for a couple of seconds as it neared the next peg saw the float lift, dip, then sink away and my gentle strike was met with a ‘clunk’ as my first roach was ticked off. I have to admit that the next 30mins was a blur as I caught roach nearly every run through, forgetting I was on a multi-species challenge! It was time for a change. I’d been feeding hemp and caster and so decided I’d slip on two casters just to see if anything had come upstream to the feeding area. It had, and a decent dace intercepted the rig before it had settled properly. Three down, two to go! The fish seemed to be off bottom so I shallowed my rig by 2ft and let it run through again, this time with a single caster to match the dozen or so I was loose feeding before every cast. It didn’t travel far and among half-a-dozen more dace I caught was probably the smallest chublet I’d ever had off the river. Four up!
Finding the final species
My final target was a skimmer, and it was time to seek out that deeper hole I’d found. By now some excess bait would have settled in it, and hopefully a skimmer or two as well. I moved the float up so I’d be laying around 8in of line on the bottom to present them with a slower moving bait, which skimmers love. I loaded the hook with three dead red maggots and aimed the float at the deeper water. It wasn’t long before the float took a slight diversion, I struck and brought a very modest skimmer to the net to complete my challenge. In a little over three hours I’d taken five species and nearly 9lb of fish. Few were bigger than the smile on my face as I packed up – but it didn’t matter.