Why a waggler is the float for all waters with Ivan Marks

The waggler is one of those floats – and there aren’t very many of them – that can genuinely be claimed to be versatile. 

It can be fished on many stillwaters, and is equally at home on smooth-flowing rivers of average-to-medium depth…but the circumstances need to be exactly right for it to work.

There are basically six types of waggler and they are all exactly the same length – eight inches. The variation is in the length of the balsa body – it is this that helps take the shot loading range of the floats from 3BB to 5AAA. The body of each is of uniform thickness.

Modern wagglers have relatively buoyant stems. Sarkandas reed is the most commonly used material. This holds up to the surface better than cane and enables the float to overcome a degree of wind and tide resistance.

Sarkandas reed isn’t exactly thin either, which means that floats in which it is used can be seen at long range – whether that long range is way out across a stillwater, or when long trotting on a flowing river.

This week I’m going to take you through a session on the River Severn on the right bank downstream of the bridge at Stourport. 

The river here is a little pacey, but the flow is even, there’s no turbulence and no danger of the float creating problems.

The wind is what I call ‘upgate’ – upstream – which makes either all-balsa or stick floats dicey prospects. They are too prone to tangles stemming from the wind.

The waggler, on the other hand, being a longish float, is well sunk.This means that the pressure on the flow forces the float downriver despite the retarding influence of the upstream wind on the tip. Clearly, a shorter float with a thicker top would be impossible.

The swim offers a number of choices. My main one has to be fishing what might be called the second shelf. That is where I expect to pick up the bulk of, if not all, the roach and chub catches.

This is a swim I have fished three times in matches. I’ve had 13lb, 17lb and 9lb, and each time it has put me into the money.

It isn’t a winning peg. There are better ones, certainly in the summer when the barbel are active. 

There may not be so many barbel at Stourport as in some other areas of the Severn, but there are enough to ensure that the swims without them are unlikely to win their users much match money.

Chub to 1lb are the main chance, along with roach to 12oz, but this is a peg where you take anything that swims. Dace can be numerous…and bleak a nuisance. 

I fish rather differently to some others, I suspect. People have expressed surprise that I should have as much as an inch of waggler top showing above the surface – but that’s for a special reason.

If you want to slow the bait down through the swim, there’s no way that’s possible if the float is shotted to within a fraction of an inch of the surface. 

The slightest tension on the float top and down it goes.

On the other hand, you can lean on an inch of waggler top quite a lot, and that effectively slows the rate of trot.

I am assuming the Severn is in reasonable nick. If it is out of sorts there’s no way that a 5AAA waggler could fish this swim, and the next step has to be to leger if conditions get any worse.

On the other hand, if the river is sluggish there’s a chance that you could fish a stick float on the first shelf – where the water is 5ft deep. Better, though, to use the waggler and cover both possibilities with one float.

Bear in mind that a waggler is first and foremost a small bait float. It can quite competently support maggots or casters, but it isn’t really man enough for meat, bunches of wasp grubs or paste. 

There are two possible shotting patterns for the waggler in this Severn swim. In the first – the normal pattern for trotting through and going for the mixed species – the float is locked on with two swan shot, with a BB, three No6s, a No6 and a No10 down the line. 

If bleak are a nuisance it is time to lock the float on with an SSG and an AAA and space 2BB (equivalent to an extra AAA shot) above the original BB, which has been slid down closer to the three No6s to achieve a faster sink rate of the hookbait. 

I look to fish this swim with casters, adding some hemp to the feed, but there are times when bronze maggots could also do a good job – although not as good as the casters when the fish are going on them.