River Fishing Tips | Punch for winter roach with Alex Bates
Few baits are cheaper and easier to use than bread, whether you’re in search of a big autumn river chub or a monster carp off the top in summer.
For the winter match and pleasure angler, a bag of Warburtons sliced comes into its own on rivers, canals and drains when roach are on the agenda.
Fished as ‘punch’, small discs of bread that swell up once in the water, bread seems to have the knack of catching when all else fails and often picks up a better class of roach than maggots, casters or pinkies. This makes it a must-have in cold weather and on clear venues.
The basics of breadpunch fishing are relatively easy to follow, but according to top matchman Alex Bates, it is in the feeding where the men are sorted from the boys, so to speak.
Get it wrong and your catch rate will falter, but sort the feeding out early on and a truly massive net of roach is on the cards.
Tackle & Bates tackle shop boss Alex has been brought up fishing his local Old River Nene in March, where breadpunch reigns supreme in winter, and has seen how fishing with this bait has evolved over the years. It’s gone from an attacking method with regular balls of feed thrown in, to a more austere feeding and fishing ‘in-out’ line of attack.
Many fish on his local drains and rivers respond to bread so he took the Angling Times cameras to the River Welland in the Lincolnshire market town on Spalding to run through the do’s and don’ts of winter punch fishing.
Alex’s advice was a bit of an eye-opener on a venue packed with so many fish!
It’s all about feeding
“The first thing to say about punch fishing is that it’s not about throwing in a ball every chuck, even on pegs that are full of fish!” Alex warned. “I find this only ever works if you have a lot of little roach in front of you, but we always want to catch as big a stamp of fish as we can so you have to feed differently.
“My approach is to introduce bread feed as you would on a canal, a ball at a time, and then fish it out. This basically means adding another ball only when the size of the fish has dropped, or they show signs of moving down the peg. So, if you start getting plagued by little roach or the bites are coming miles down the peg, that’s the time to feed again.”
Small balls work best
“Don’t be tempted to feed too much of the bread mix as this can make the peg worse rather than better,” he revealed.
“I make a ball roughly the size of a golf ball or a little bigger, and I know it will stay where it’s landed. Punch crumb is heavy and doesn’t get wafted about if the pace of the river changes or, as can happen in March and Spalding, it begins to flow the other way completely!”
What depth?
“Punch fishing to me is all about finding the better stamp of fish, so you’ll need to change depth from a few inches off bottom to an inch or two overdepth.
“If there are few little fish about, fishing off deck can work well and this is when the pencil float is best – but on the SF2 pole float I fish this just overdepth to help slow it down,” he said.
Simple bread rigs
“There’s nothing very complicated about my rigs, and I tend to fall back on two types for different jobs,” he said. “The first is a 0.3g Rive 3 pencil pattern for when the river is not running too hard. if it flows, I change to a Drennan SF2 0.4g float as this has a slight shoulder to let me slow the rig down in the flow.
“The pencil is shotted with a bulk and one dropper to get the punch down fast while the SF2 has a spread bulk. The pencil allows me to work the bait by lifting it up and down in little flow and even fish just off bottom, whereas the SF2 is designed to be held back slightly and run through the swim at roughly half pace.
“By keeping a tight line I can see every indication. There’s also less resistance to a fish with the spread pattern so you can see the bite quicker,” Alex added.
“My favourite punch hook is a size 19 Hayabusa 128 fished with 0.12mm main, a 5ins 0.09mm hooklink and a No5 solid elastic.”
Best hook bread
“On the hook I use Warburtons Toastie straight from the orange bag for a very soft bait that can work well if the fishing is hard.
“On good pegs, this changes to Warburtons in the blue bag. I microwave each slice for 10 seconds on full power in the morning and then pop them in a plastic takeaway tub with the lid on,” explained Alex.
“This results in a slightly tacky bread that won’t swell up too much and stays on well for shipping out.
“However, it has to be right, and the acid test is whether the piece of punch stays on after the strike. If you are coming back with the bread still on the hook, it is too tacky!
“I also cut each slice into quarters so I use them up faster, and this also means I am fishing with fresher bread as opposed to using a full slice, which can take an hour or so to use up.
“In that time the slice will have dried out, whereas a quarter won’t last as long and so is perfect. Best punch sizes are 4mm or 5mm,” he added.
Alex’s feed for fishing breadpunch
“You can go down two routes here, either using liquidised white bread or punch crumb – both have their place,” Alex said. “Liquidised bread is quite active and fluffy and helps gets bites when fish are few and far between.
“Punch crumb is heavier, goes straight down and gives off little in the way of particles, so it’s ideal when you’re on a lot of fish that you want to keep on the bottom and catch fast.
“My favourite mix is two bags of plain white breadcrumb and a bag of Sensas Punch Crumb. I’ll add a little gravel to this when mixed to help it sink every time.
“I mix the bread feed the night before to a damp consistency. Then in the morning I spray it with an atomiser to bring it back to the right consistency. You should be able to squeeze a ball with one hand easily. If it shows signs of falling apart after the squeeze, give it another spray.”
