River Fishing Tips | Get the best from trotting a stick float with Darren Cox
There are few more enjoyable ways of tackling a river than the stick float, running the rig way down the peg, then watching that tiny domed float top bury as the strike is met by the jag of a big roach or dace.
Good as the pole is, it is a tactic that limits how much of the swim you can cover. A rod and line with a stick, though, opens up so much more water, while retaining the same degree of control and presentation to coax regular bites.
However, it’s not a case of setting up one rod to get the job done. The key to catching well on a river with the stick is to make constant changes until you find exactly how the fish want the bait presenting.
That makes stick fishing a busy way to set about a river swim, and a very enjoyable one too.
When the stick float is better
When there’s pace on the river, I think that to catch roach and dace with a moving bait you need to slow things down to a speed where the fish will take the bait confidently.
It’s all about trial and error – running the rig at full pace, then checking it to a standstill. Next I will release it, then ease the float through at half pace and so on.
I’ll regularly move the shot on the line to make the bait behave differently.
However, there are right and wrong conditions to fish the stick in.
Generally speaking, an upstream wind or no breeze at all is bang on, whereas a downstreamer will make controlling the rig and keeping the line behind the float very difficult.
How far out to fish
I’d always fish in the main depth of the river and aim to find a flat spot of an even depth to get a good run through. I plumb up using a big heavy plummet and locate the depth both in front of me and well down the peg. That way I’ll know of any depth changes where I may need to slow the bait down to prevent it being dragged under.
Distance is also governed by the pace, because although more fish will be in the main flow, you won’t be able to fish as effectively here. Instead, I’d pick a line where the pace is slower and where the fish can feed properly. A bit of a compromise is needed. You’re better off not fishing where the majority of the fish are with a bad presentation, and instead going for a ‘good’ line and catching what you can with better presentation.
Shotting
By having two different shotting patterns I can achieve very different levels of presentation. The middle-of-the-road rig and the lighter stick have shirt button-style patterns of No8 shot grouped together in pairs and evenly-spread from halfway down the rig, tapering off to single No8 droppers on the hooklink. This gives the bait a slower fall through the peg and means that when I hold the float back in the flow, the bait will rise off the bottom a few inches.
On the heavier rig, I use a bulk of No4 shot a couple of feet from the hook to make up around 80 per cent of the shotting capacity. The remainder consists of No8 droppers. This is a much more positive rig to get the bait straight to where the fish are, and is ideal for days when a lot of fish are in the peg and you don’t have to search for them.
Dead depth or overdepth?
Traditionally, the stick float is fished to just trundle along the riverbed at full pace, but because I want to slow the bait down, I can actually fish overdepth by quite some way as long as I keep the float controlled as it runs down the river.
I set my lighter sticks six inches overdepth and cast the rig in so the bait is downstream of the float.
I then constantly vary the speed at which the float runs. Being in direct control, I can ensure that the rig is never pulled under.
Float sizes
I’ll rig up three floats of different sizes and work out which one is best for the conditions. My sticks are hand-made by my friend Nick Sutton and take No4 shot, seven in the case of the ‘No 7’ float.
My rule of thumb is to use a No4 shot for every foot of depth, so in a 7ft deep swim I use a No 7 stick as my ‘middle-of-the-road’ rig. I can then go either way with a heavier or a lighter rig to find which one gives the best presentation.
At the start I will cast out the middle-of-the road rig without a bait on to see whether the rig is hitting bottom or not, if I can control it and hold it back, and how the float tip reacts when run at full pace – is there enough buoyancy in the rig or not? From these findings I will select a heavier stick, perhaps taking nine or 10 No4s, and a lighter one taking just three or four shot.
