On a recent trip, despite being hit with piles of rain, I found the river running gin clear. But I wasn’t too worried – I broke out my mix, the bulk of which was made up of three loaves of liquidised bread. There’s a playground upstream where parents bring their kids to feed the ducks, which made bread a natural choice. But rather than mix this with water, I use coconut milk. This, combined with the bread, creates a large white cloud once dropped into the water, emulating coloured-river conditions. Sometimes, this mix would be all I feed, but, as it was autumn, leaves were falling into the river and carrying lots of little grubs with them, so I added a good helping of maggots, too. The swim I selected had some overhangs and a bit of depth, and I threw in 10 balls of groundbait just upstream of me. Instantly, I could see bleak boiling on the surface amongst its cloud, and I suspected a few larger fish would be sat below them.
My tactic was to fish the stick float, using a 2g pattern, a 3lb hooklink and size 16 hook with a double white maggot hookbait. First cast it buried with a roach of around 10oz, and over the next few hours I put a steady stream of fish into the net before I ran out of groundbait. Knowing the action would slow if the water cleared, I decided to create a cloud of a different kind. I was stood in the river, so shuffled my feet around to agitate the bottom and send a cloud of mud downstream. I still had plenty of maggots, so started feeding a handful a cast in the muddy cloud I was creating. It’s a slightly unorthodox tactic, but the swim became alive with fish! The float was burying seconds after casting, with quality dace being landed every chuck.
I was feeding mixed maggots but noticed the dace were only coughing up whites, so switched to using just these on the hook. I had another run of good fish before the bleak moved in. In desperation I swapped to reds and, interestingly, I was back into the big dace! They all seemed to be over 10oz – superb fish. But then, I hit into something much heavier and wondered if a small chub had got in on the action. However, when I netted the fish, I realised it was a massive dace. On the scales, it weighed 1lb 2oz. Four hours after starting I’d run out of bait, but what a session – 19lb of roach and dace with seven of the latter species weighing between 14oz and 1lb 2oz.
I believe that, had I not prepared for the river conditions and used my cloudy groundbait mix, I’d have hardly caught a thing. Being experimental with my additives and approach transformed what could’ve been a forgettable session.”
Well done Roger!