River Fishing Tips | How to empty a swim with Darren Cox
You can’t beat a big old river for a real test of your fishing skills – a river that asks plenty of questions and demands a thorough trawling of the old grey matter to reward you with just a few fish.
But catching well on running water isn’t as difficult as it may first appear.
River fish need to feed every day in order to survive, and that means they can be caught regardless of conditions. You need to work out where in the swim they are and how the fish want the bait presented so they’ll wolf it down.
We call this ‘finding the sweet spot’, a point where your feed meets the fish and where you’ll get 99 per cent of your bites. Working this out can take time, but do it properly and the rest is child’s play. It’s all to do with the pace and depth of the swim and what the riverbed is made of.
Finding the right spot
The bailiff or a local tackle shop will put you on the right swim, ideally with a hard gravel bottom and around 5ft of water to go at. As for pace, a river flowing at the speed of a gentle walk is what you’re after.
There’s no better way of doing this than using the waggler to search the peg. You need a clean bottom of gravel or one that’s snag-free to get the best results, fishing overdepth with the bait laid on the riverbed to slow it down. We call this ‘reverse dragging’. Set the rig 4ins-5ins overdepth so that the bait will drag on the riverbed, making it slower than the pace of the river.
Feeding correctly
Now loosefeed at the top of the swim (directly in front of you). Whether you’re using maggots or hemp, the feed will hit the bottom in one rough area, a point that the fish will move up to and mill around waiting for a free meal – that’s the sweet spot.
Cast the waggler 10yds or so further down the peg. This means the bait ends up settling just above where the feed has landed, which in turn leads to quicker bites. Fishing in front of or beyond this spot will produce nothing, but for that golden five or six seconds when the bait is run in the right place, the float will keep on going under.
Within the opening hour of a session the fish will quickly show you where the sweet spot is, and you can then adjust how far down the peg you cast to speed things up even faster.
Keep feeding and casting in the same spots and you’re well on the way!
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.
How to rove for chub on your local river
Keeping mobile and scouring miles of river in a day is the best way to keep warm this winter and chub are the ultimate species to target when adopting this proactive approach.
Tiny rivers that weave through stunning countryside settings are often the perfect place to employ a roving attack, with many enthusiasts of this style often visiting over a dozen swims in a session. A short spurt in one spot will soon provide indications as to whether a greedy chub inhabits the peg and if it does, you can bet your bottom dollar that a carefully presented hookbait will soon be engulfed.
WHERE TO FISH
Chub can be found in almost every English, Welsh and lower-Scottish rivers and streams. They have bred well and many numbers of chub of decent sizes are targetable across the country with hundreds of waters giving up 5lb specimens, and many prime rivers providing the angler with chub to over 6lb.
Even tiny rivers and backwaters hold big chub.
They can be found in deep and powerful rivers such as the Trent, Severn, Thames and Wye, through to tiny little backwaters that you could wade or even jump across. So there’s a high chance that you can find chub a short drive away from your home. A good start is to ask at your local tackle shop or keep an eye out in our 'where to fish' section of the Angling Times each week to help you find venues.
SWIM SELECTION
It is no secret that chub love to lie close to cover and there is no shortage of it on the river, with stacks of swims home to sunken trees, overhanging branches and clumps of brambles. Add to that a mixture of fast glides and gentle slacks and you potentially have hundreds of little areas that look incredibly inviting. The diagram below shows you some classic chub holding features. Click on it to enlarge..
Locating chub on a river is so important in winter
BAITS
Cheesepaste is a top chub bait in winter
The good news is chub are one of the least fussy species in our waterways. However, there are some days when one bait out of five is the only one they want so taking a few change baits with you on the bank is a good idea. The top baits for chub in winter are generally, cheesepaste, meat, bread flake, maggots, lobworms, boilies and paste but thats not to say other homemade and natural varieties such as a big black slug are not worth trying on the day. When the river is coloured cheesepaste is tough to beat and has accounted for some monster fish in the past. Find out how to roll your own here.
GEAR
Travelling light will make it easier to find the chub.
Minimal tackle is required for the ambush to end in success, with a rod, landing net, unhooking mat and a small bag of terminal tackle all that you need to carry. Bogging yourself down with too much gear will only discourage you from moving swims which will in turn mean you get less bites. On some stretches where there is bankside vegetation to rest your rod on you may not even need to take a bank stick! Travelling light will also mean you are more stealthy and less likely to spook shy fish.
RIGS
Keeping things simple is the key to success with chub. Having too complicated a rig can also make it difficult to re-tie another in cold weather should you experience a breakage or tangle. A simple link leger rig is all you need to catch a few chub and some of the sport's top anglers still use this tradtional setup to catch fish in excess of 8lb. Tie a small loop in some strong mono and cut the other end to around two inches in length before pinching two or three SSG onto it. Thread the loop end up the line and prevent it from sliding down to the hook using a float stop or small swivel (see rig diagram below). A float stop will also allow you to alter the length of your hooklength at any time if you are fishing straight through with your reel line. This setup also makes it easy to change to another hook pattern if you decide to dramtically change hookbaits during a session. If you are planning to fish with baits like cheesepaste and bread a large hook say an 6 or 8 is perfect for burying the hook in the bait. Just make sure you fish a fairly powerful carp style variety with a thick wire gauge as chub are powerful creatures and can easily bend a hook shank. As for your line, this depends on how snaggy the river is and also the size of chub in it. Generally a line of around 6-8lb mono is more than beefy enough to cope with the biggest of chub you'll encounter on UK rivers.
A simple link leger rig is all you need for chub success.
FEEDING & TACTICS
A bread feeder and breadflake hookbait are a great combo for chub.
There are many different options on offer here. A small cage feeder with liquidised or mashed bread in it can prove deadly during the winter. On days where the fish are more easily spooked than sticking to the link leger and feeding by hand is sometimes better. In this scenario a handful of mashed bread, created by soaking some cut slices heavily in water, or some small nail size blobs of cheesepaste fed into the likely areas should bring you success. A great tactic especially when there are few anglers on the water is to walk away from your car, feeding all the likely looking spots as described above. When you've fed enough areas, say 10, you can then walk back on yourself fishing all the spots you have baited. If you dont get a bite within half an hour, move on. If you prefer to use maggots or worms than feeding regularly by hand or a baitdropper is better.
Continue down for our top ten chub fishing tips...
Get it right and you can enjoy chub catches like this one.
