Improve Your Coarse Fishing (UK)
Plumb rigs to perfection
You catch more fish if you spend a little more time ensuring your rig is accurately plumbed to the correct depth, assures Iain Swanson
ONE of the first tasks when your tackle is set up is to reach for the plummet and work out the depth. The float will be slid into an approximate position as you make an initial guess at how much water is in front of you, before you ship out and lower it down. After a couple of attempts you usually have the rig set at a depth that you believe to be touching bottom, but just how accurate are you? You might believe that your hookbait is just touching bottom but have you called it right? And even if you haven’t, does being a couple of inches out either way really matter? Fishing IT’s Iain Swanson is a real stickler for accuracy and spends more time than most plumbing up. “Many anglers plumb up and when they feel it hit the bottom and they see the float just above the surface they are happy with the depth the rig is set at,” explained Iain. “But you need to plumb up very accurately to make the most of the session. Being an inch overdepth or an inch off the deck can make a huge difference to how well you catch.”
Stand-out hookbait
Iain isn’t happy to catch just a handful of fish in the cold season and focuses mainly on silvers. Roach, perch and skimmers have a much bigger appetite in early spring than carp and it can be a fish every drop if you get your tactics right. “Many commercials are silty and if you fish with your hookbait on the bottom it could quite easily disappear and reduce the number of bites you get. To make the hookbait stand out I set the rig so that it is an inch off the deck. When plumbing up the float bristle sits just under the surface. Any fish close to the deck will see the hookbait quickly and this leads to a very short waiting time for the action to commence.” If that doesn’t produce the goods, Iain will slowly work his way shallower, taking an inch at a time off the depth until he starts to get bites. “Changing the depth by such a tiny amount can have a huge effect on your catch rate. You could have the bait an inch off dead depth and struggle, but switch it to 3in off the deck and you could instantly get bites.”
Positive rigs
Fishing for roach often involves very sensitive rigs, with your shotting strung out so that the hookbait falls at a very slow pace. This enables fish at all depths to see it and give them the chance to suck it in. But Iain prefers a shotting pattern with a bulk of shot and one small dropper on the hooklength knot. “I firmly believe that roach take a bait and don’t move off with it. You wouldn’t see many bites if you used a strung-out shotting pattern because they wouldn’t register on the float. “By having a bulk and a small dropper, the float dips the moment a fish takes the bait.” As the session progresses and more bait goes in, the fish are likely to become more active and the bites will be unmissable. They could also come further up in the water column – it’s then time to try a different rig. “The second rig I would use is a 4x12 Preston Innovations Chianti, this time shotted with a double bulk and fished higher off the bottom. “It can take a little trial and error to find out the optimum feeding zone but by making slight changes on a regular basis you will find it.”
Drip feed
Maggots might seem an obvious choice for roach and other silvers but Iain doesn’t take any to the bank. Pinkies are by far his favourite bait for his main zone at 13m, feeding a few casters on a line closer in at about 6m that often produces bigger fish later in the day. “I start by potting in around 50-60 pinkies
on a long pole line and go straight over it with a single pinkie on the hook. “If conditions allow, I keep topping up with 10 pinkies every drop by catapult. But they are quite light and can be difficult to fire out to 13m, especially in a wind, so I also have no problem in potting them in each time I ship back out.” A pinch of casters are fed by hand every two minutes and this line is attacked in the last hour, with bigger roach and bonus skimmers often producing the sport. Worcestershire’s Woodland View was where Iain showed off his tactics for IYCF and the silvers were definitely up for a munch. Plumbing up with precision, he set the rig an inch off the deck and was into small roach immediately. The fish kept coming and at one point he decided to add an inch to the depth so that it was just on the bottom and reckoned that sport would slow up. He was bang on, and while it was taking a minute to get a bite initially, he was having to wait double that time – proof that the hookbait was getting lost in the silt. After a few missed bites Iain switched rigs and came 4in off bottom. This produced a few fish but going up to 6in off made all the difference and the fast pace that had been set earlier was resumed. “I’ve had around 15lb of silvers today and that is a weight that would win most matches down here at the moment. Constantly adjusting the depth by small measurements has been key. “Plumbing up accurately is so important, and paying great detail to the depth you are fishing at will make you much more successful,” concluded Iain.