Improve Your Coarse Fishing (UK)
Get in the Grove for roach – Barry Fisher
Local expert, Barry Fisher, discovers a day-ticket lake where a personal best redfin is almost a certainty...
ABIG roach is a very special fish. But finding a venue that holds them in suitable numbers to make them a realistic target is often the biggest obstacle. A 1lb-plus bar of silver is well worth a text message to a few mates and a redfin over 2lb is the fish of a lifetime for most of us. But finding waters where you can wet a line and find such giants can be tricky. If I had £1 for every time the phone has rung and an angler has claimed to have found a fishery ‘stacked with big roach’ I’d have the cash to upgrade my pole and seatbox every year! Sadly, many of these claims are from people who have had a one-off red letter day that is unlikely to be repeated because of the small number of quality roach on offer. Every now and then, though, someone who I implicitly trust gets in touch. So when Barry Fisher sent me a message saying: ‘mate, I’ve found this water where the roach are massive – I’ve had loads over 1lb already today!’ I had to find out more. The hidden gem he had discovered was Grove Fisheries just outside Chester. “I used to fish here for carp when I was a kid. Back then there were no commercials and barely any waters had them,” explained Barry when I met him. “But like most people, I moved on to new adventures. I hadn’t fished here for a long time but recently I saw a picture of a big perch on social media and thought I would give it a go. “I set up with worms and maggots and started catching roach instantly. In a few hours I had over 30lb of them to more than 1lb 8oz. “A few days later I went back with tactics more suited to roach and the fishing was even better. I realised the previous trip was no fluke and I had found something very special,” he said.
Rumours of 3lb roach!
Grove Fisheries is less than an acre in size and has become a favourite with local carp anglers, thanks to the head of 20-pounders it holds. But its stock of silvers have been neglected, with very few anglers taking advantage of the fish on offer. None of the mod-cons that are becoming standard fare at venues are present, with just a car park and toilet the only facilities. Neither are there wooden platforms to fish
from. Instead anglers just position themselves in the gaps between the reeds and trees. This minimalist approach is a breath of fresh air and helps to give the fishery a character that makes it especially memorable. But it is the exceptional quality of the roach that will remain in your mind the longest. “I have only had a handful of sessions here since I rediscovered it and I have broken my personal best several times, with the biggest so far going 1lb 14oz. “If I can achieve that in a few sessions then there are almost certainly 2lb-plus fish in here. The fishery owner told me that he has heard of 3lb specimens,” said an excited Barry. The best bit is that there’s no need to buy an expensive membership. Day-tickets are available from £10 for one rod.
A selective approach
Single or double maggot or caster are often the first baits that anglers reach for when targeting roach. While they will work well at Grove, Barry prefers to up the ante a little. “There are thousands of small roach up to 4oz and if you use small baits you will get plagued by them all day. “I prefer to use a big bait that only the larger roach can take,” he added. Five or six maggots, a large section of worm or even a 10mm boilie are excellent options that will appeal to the 1lb-plus chunks. Scaled-down tackle isn’t as important as you might imagine. The roach are barely ever caught and if they are, it is after they have desperately hung on to a large hook baited with a boilie that was intended for carp and is much too big for their mouths! “I use 6lb mainline and a 5lb hooklength to a size 12 hook. This gives you half a chance if you do latch into a carp, and the big hook is required for the size of bait you are using,” he added. Fishing the float will score but Barry goes down the maggot feeder route, preferring to keep the loosefeed on the deck because a trickle introduced by a catapult often gets the small fish darting all over the swim. This unsettles the larger samples. “You need to keep plenty of bait going in so I recast the feeder
every five to 10 minutes to make sure that the carpet of feed is regularly topped up. I also start by introducing 10 feeders of maggots. This I do by filling it, casting out, leaving it for 30 seconds and then reeling in to repeat the process.” Barry had shown me dozens of images from his previous trial sessions, but could he produce a repeat performance for the IYCF cameras? It was time to find out.
Too many to count
Casting close to the central island, Barry had soon put down a bed of maggots and baited his size 12 hook with five red grubs. Within less than a minute the tip had started to tremble, but he held firm. “These will be the small fish pecking away at the hookbait. You will know when a proper fish has taken the bait because the indication will be much more positive,” he said. Winding in after 10 minutes, three maggots had been smashed, so an early switch to a section of worm was made and the trap reset. The little taps continued but the more rugged nature of the hookbait left him confident it wouldn’t be destroyed. Shortly afterwards the tip curved round and moments later a 10oz fish was in the net. Plenty of others between 6oz and 12oz came to the net over the next hour before Barry decided to switch to casting every 15 minutes. “I think the smaller fish are getting overexcited every time bait goes in, and that could be deterring the bigger fish. “I am going to wait a little longer and hopefully this will settle the swim, the small fish will back away because there isn’t much food around and the bigger ones will move in and mop up.” The change was a masterstroke. On the very first cast it resulted in a fish that warranted a visit to the scales and swung the dial round to an impressive 1lb 4oz. In a golden half hour another brace over the 1lb mark came to the net, with three others over 12oz thrown in for good measure. By rotating how much he fed Barry kept encouraging the curious big roach to return to his baited area on a regular basis and in four hours he lost count of the 6oz-10oz fish he landed, with around 15 between 12oz and 1lb 9oz going into the net too. “Even the small fish are of a good stamp and the quality roach are absolute beauties,” he said. “I haven’t even got among the biggest on offer today but just look at the size of them – the best today would have been a personal best for me not long ago. “If you had to pick a venue to produce a net of big roach right now then Grove Fisheries should definitely be top of your list,” concluded Barry. I couldn’t argue so why not go and see how good it is for yourselves?
“The very first cast resulted in a fish that swung the dial round to a pleasing 1lb 4oz”