Matthew Tann from Portsmouth reflects on an enjoyable day spent on a local river catching pristine roach.

I have wanted to go and target these roach for a while now and with the conditions being perfect, I took the day off work and spent the day on the river bank trotting for these pristine roach.

Tactics were simple, as the river is only small I used my 11ft MatchPro Ultralight float rod with a small 1 swan Loafer float and a shirt button style shotting pattern down to a size 18 Wide Gape Hook To Nylon.

I opted purely to fish bread, so a bag of liquidised bread and a few slices were all I needed for a great days sport. I chose to fish 7mm bread punch on the hook with a pinch of liquidised bread every other cast to draw the fish up into the swim.

The red fins were lining up to take our bait and between myself and my good friend Chris, we soon amassed a bumper catch. The average roach being around 10oz with several going over a 1lb. It was a really enjoyable days fishing and I’m looking forward to another trip very soon.