Commercial Fishing Tips | Six tips to shallow up for silvers - Ricky Young

As long as the temperatures overnight and in the day stay settled, with no big drops, I’ll put my money on catching a big net of quality silvers by fishing off bottom, sometimes even properly shallow.

Fishing shallow can catch you quality nets of silvers

Here’s some tips to help you do the same…

GO FOR A LIGHT ELASTIC

Even if you hook a rogue carp, you can get it out using light elastic. The Browning Microbore orange grade I use is perfect – soft enough to land roach and skimmers without hook-pulls, but you can land a carp with a side-puller kit.

Big fish can be landed on light elastics

GREAT PRESENTATION

A light float allows the bait to fall through the water slowly and find the bigger roach. A homemade slim-bodied 0.2g float taking seven or eight No10 shot strung in the bottom half of the rig will get the job done.

A light float encourages a slow fall of the hookbait through the water

USE GROUNDBAIT

I’ll pot in three large balls of groundbait. This attracts and focuses the fish in a spot over which I can then fire casters. My mix is a split of Browning Black Roach, Quick Skimmer and Formula Fish.

Pot in groundbait to draw the fish in from the off

SWITCH TO MAGGOTS

Casters are always my choice for silverfish, but they can sometimes be too selective. Maggots are the great fall-back bait that can get a peg going again when it seems to have slowed up.

Maggots are a great change bait if bites slow down on casters

FEED A SECOND LINE

You won’t plunder one line all day, as the fish will eventually back off. This is where I have a second swim on the go, to target big roach and skimmers. I put this in at 6m but off to one side, and will only fish here on the bottom.

Feed another line to with to when bites slow up

FEED WITH A CATTY

While the weather remains mild, the fish will still be active. To catch off bottom, you need to keep loosefeeding casters. The regime is 10 casters fired in every time I drop the rig in and every 60 seconds when I’m fishing the close-in line.