IT’S ROACH FISHING, BUT NOT AS WE KNOW IT...
Being a purist is all well and good, but at this time of year subtle tactics fly out of the window
MAKE no bones about it, anywhere between mid-March and the end of April is challenging for any angler who doesn’t happen to like carp. The rivers are out of reach, predators are no longer on the agenda, and bream and tench are slow to wake up.
That doesn’t leave much, so it’s little wonder that many of us hang the rods up for a while to catch up on domestic chores.
On the other hand, stillwater roach are at their heaviest right now, as they won’t spawn for a few weeks yet. They’re beautiful to behold, with sparkling silver flanks and that wonderful blue hue to each scale.
You can see why the roach was once the nation’s favourite fish, its guile more than matching its looks to offer the perfect challenge. So do as I do every spring and make a specimen roach your goal.
Ideally I’d floatfish for redfins, but I’m a realist who knows when he’s wasting his time. Venues that hold big roach are often sparsely stocked and that, along with the cold nights and the bright skies common at this time of year, results in few if indeed any bites.
It’s hard to maintain concentration when the float isn’t dipping or the tip isn’t moving, so the only option now is the dreaded bolt rig. Any purist notions I might have harboured go out of the window if it means I can catch fish! With a bolt rig, if you get it right, the timid bites you expect from roach become unmissable. So, now let’s see how I fared on a recent spring trip.
The pressure had been through the roof and that, combined with a bright and brittle sky, gave me no reason to even consider fishing until well after lunch. There are simply times when fish don’t feed for most of the day, and this was one of them. This was going to be a short session, and I was lucky in that past experience had taught me where to cast. In fact, line was already positioned at the correct point in the spool clip!
My two 1.25lb Drennan twintipped rods were armed with 8lb mono, heavily overgunned for
the roach, but not for the strain caused by repeated casts.
My terminal tackle began with a micro swivel trapped between two float stops sitting above a Drennan feeder bomb tied to the mainline. To the swivel on this helicopter set-up I attached a very short hooklength of 2.5ins, ensuring that when pulled down it was just above the feeder to avoid tangles. At the business end, a 5lb Supplex fluorocarbon link with a size 18 wide gape Specialist hook was tipped off with two red maggots.
Feeders filled, I punched out both rigs to a clear spot before sinking the line under maximum tension. Placing the rods on buzzers took up any remaining slack so that if, or when, a roach picked up the maggot it would hook itself.
Besides recasting every 15 minutes I fired out six small Spomb loads of black continental groundbait laced heavily with Sticky’s Hemp
Oil. Mixed on the dry side, this would cloud the water and release a slick of nutty scent.
On top of this went four further Spombfuls of neat hemp to focus the fish’s attention in one spot, right where my feeders were positioned.
I wonder if this seed is so attractive because it mimics the roach’s natural food – snails – so closely with its hard shell? I was confident a roach wouldn’t be able to resist what I’d put on the menu, which is why several blank hours came as something of a surprise!
At dusk I wound in, refilled the feeders and cast out again. Alas, the taut lines didn’t twitch and not a single fish showed on the surface. The warmth of a clear daytime sky came at the cost of a cold evening as the sun set, and I felt the chill immediately. Was it time to pack up and accept failure? In the end I decided to wait another hour until it was fully dark.
The sky turned from blue and gold to inky black and in no time at all the view overhead was spangled with stars. As if on cue, roach began priming across the lake’s surface. Soon after, my left-hand bobbin pulled up
“The sky above turned from blue and gold to inky black”
against the alarm. There was no need to strike – I simply picked up the rod and felt the headshakes of a big roach which, typically, headed to the surface and rolled as I slowly wound it towards me.
I feared a hook pull, but the wide gape was buried deep and the barb had a firm hold. In the margins I had to give some line back to a fish that knew the end of the fight offered its best hope of parting company.
I imagined the line falling slack and the feeder flying out of the water, and who knows, maybe my pessimism prevented that actually happening.
Either way, I was relieved when the landing net came to my rescue. Inside lay the perfect example of why you should be roach fishing now.