lots of silvers on a little bait
Lee Kerry tackles The Oaks Fishery’s prolific stocks of winter roach on the pole
Plenty of brilliant commercial fisheries have big stocks of silver fish, giving anglers the chance to fish good winter matches where bites are plentiful, even on the coldest of days.
I always try to get involved in matches like these, and the Oaks Fishery’s midweek silverfish competitions at Sessay, North Yorks, offer me a perfect opportunity to get the pole out and enjoy a good day’s sport.
As I write, I’ve fished two matches. Both have offered different challenges, but I have managed to get two good results, including winning on my most recent visit, by keeping the basic approach really simple.
Bait choices
You could take an abundance of bait to these matches – casters, pinkies, worms, pellets and bread. Each one will have its day, but I find it very difficult to spend half the match trying to find the best bait when the head of fish is so great. However, finding the fish and sorting the feeding is so important.
I take two pints of maggots and a bowl of groundbait and with just that, I can get the fish to behave in different ways and tweak my approach to suit how they are feeding on the day.
I’ll keep an open mind with other baits, but with only a few matches to go at a simple bait approach gives me a good base from which to work.
Where to fish
Several lakes are used at the Oaks. Some are a maximum of 3ft deep, others 4ft or 5ft and some up to 9ft! You have to approach each one with a slightly different twist – my general rule for winter being that the shallower the lake, the more distance you need between to put between you and the fish.
This applies at the Oaks, with the shallowest lake often needing 13m-plus of pole to get bites. The deeper the lakes, the more you can catch closer in.
Both my matches have seen me on a lake called Oak, which is around 4ft 6ins deep. You can catch fish at 13m as a main line but they will come closer, even in the deep margins. You can rule out catching short all day though, as this seldom happens.
rigs
Most pegs in use are of a uniform depth throughout, so you can often get away with fishing the same rigs in various swims.
My first-choice float is the F1 Fine, a slim pattern that’s super sensitive thanks to the thin, hollow bristle, which is just that bit more visible. When you are shotting floats right down, a visible bristle is especially important.
Two sizes of float cover two different presentations, and although both are shotted similarly, there is a key difference. Taking floats of 4x12 and 4x10, both have a strung-out pattern of No10s on the bigger float and No11s on the 4x10. But the bigger float has the shot slightly tighter together at 4ins intervals while the lighter float increases this gap to 5ins-6ins. That changes the presentation from settling quickly, to a slower fall of the bait.
Both have their place, the general rule being that if there are small fish feeding, you need the bigger float to catch them more efficiently. If you are catching fewer fish, you usually won’t pick up anything bigger except on the 4x10 float.
fish fine
One question you really have to ask yourself on these types of matches is ‘am I fishing light enough?’ I’m sure people think that because you need 20lb or more, you have to fish strong gear but this couldn’t be further from the truth.
Generally speaking, the average size of fish is that much better on a commercial, probably because of the constant source of food, so to catch 20lb you may only be looking for 100 roach or 20 skimmers. As a result, you don’t need to fish big hooks, thick lines