Dave Harrell

reveals how to catch using an insert waggler

EVER since I first got into river floatfishing I have loved catching fish on the waggler.

In the early days, for me it was all about floats made from peacock quill and sarkandas reed. The latter has fallen out of favour as a float-making material, but peacock wagglers are still very popular.

As the years have gone by I have experimented a lot with waggler designs and I would love to go back in time with all the patterns I now have. For sure, I would have caught a lot more fish if I’d had them.

This week, we’re looking at the sensitive end of the scale and wagglers you will need in your armoury for those days when rivers are low and flow is slow.

Right now, those days feel like a distant memory with all the rain we’ve been having, but over the next few weeks I feel sure we will have a long dry spell. When we do, the rivers will drop quickly and insert wagglers will play a big part on slow-moving water.

WHAT SIZE FLOATS?

Float size is determined by how far out you can get your loosefeed.

If it’s windy and you can only catapult feed to around 20m then you need to use the right size float to get to that distance and be able to control it when it gets there.

SHOTTING INSERTS

For the smaller sizes up to 3AAA I fix nearly all the shot around the float with a No8 shot down the line for every 2ft of depth.

A 6ft-deep swim would have three No8 shot down, with the nearest 10ins from the hook.

DEPTH CHANGES

Always spend time plumbing the depth with a top and bottom attached float, before you fix a waggler on the line.

Once you’ve got everything in place, start at full depth and them experiment with depth changes, every 10 minutes or so.

Eventually you will find where the fish want to feed and be able to line them up!

FEEDING THE SWIM

Correct feeding goes hand in hand with good control. There are two ways to do it, and these are ‘cast and feed’ or ‘feed and cast’.

Both work, so I often feed before and after casting and on many occasions I will feed during the run-through as well.