Improve Your Coarse Fishing (UK)
Be prepared to wait
Different bites
Whether the float lifts or goes under, it’s likely to happen quite slowly and deliberately if a skimmer is on the other end, effectively giving you all the time in the world to strike. My advice is to take that time! Skimmers are so easy to bump and it often unsettles the feeding shoal when this happens. If I can, I will delay my strike by several seconds just to make sure it well and truly has my bait.
Roach, on the other hand, don’t take anything like as much time to decide whether to eat a bait or not and can spit it out as quick as a flash! They are best hit the very second you know that one has your bait.
Roach, being the aggressive and confident feeders, will often feed all day and are normally the first to arrive at any introduced bait. On a good day, it can take an hour for the skimmers to arrive and start feeding properly, while on harder days it could take three to four hours. A great way of targeting roach and skimmers is often to start fishing for roach while you wait for the skimmers to arrive. If the roach take a while arrive too, like they do at Meadowlands, then start on a feeder looking to pick off the odd skimmer before the bigger shoals arrive on your pole lines later in the day.
Roach are most likely to respond in the morning, with skimmers switching on to the feed once the session is well underway
The verdict
Today, I’ve caught an odd skimmer in among the roach at 11m and a few roach on the feeder and at 15m on my skimmer line, as well as a rogue big perch that also decided to join the party. At the end of the day, fish are opportunists and will feed when and where they can and often against the rules.
But, by tailoring your approaches to the species you are after, you will be much more successful in the long run. This has been proved today by the fact that 90% of the time, the intended line has produced a bite from the intended species.