Part 2 – Tackle and Technique
I use a 14ft Drennan match rod for float fishing and an 11ft Drennan Quiver-tip rod for legering. Main line is 2.5lb and hooklength 2lb. Hooks vary from 20’s spade end, to eyed 10’s, depending on the bait. 
Now for the most difficult aspect of crucian fishing – detecting bites, and then converting them into hooked fish. Float fishing is the preferred method for catching crucians, for this method is often the only way you will see a bite from them, and although I don’t fish with a pole myself I would think that it would be the best method of all. Float fishing is not always best though, but more of that later.
Crucians feed in a very tricky way. They have this almost unique ability to mouth the bait without hardly lifting it off the bottom, and then moving along the bottom very slowly. The result is that you see little, if anything, at the float, or no more than a slight lift, and then a drifting to one side or the other which can easily be mistaken for the drift of the water. Or moving towards or away from you which is even more difficult to see. The lift method has little success, for the lift method has to use a fairly substantial bottom shot to work correctly, and the crucian will not tolerate excess weight, even when finely balanced with the float and the remainder of the shotting. Also, the lift method depends on the bottom shot being lifted, and this just doesn’t happen often enough, or with sufficient emphasis, when crucians are the target. Ordinary laying-on float fishing techniques also suffer in the same way and for almost the same reasons.
It seems that, most of the time anyhow, the most successful float fishing rig is one that has the depth set exactly to the depth of the water, with the hookbait hardly touching bottom (or even very, very slightly off bottom) without any line whatsoever laid on. The nearest shot to the hook, no heavier than a No. 4, should be as close as three inches away, and, unless there is a very heavy drift, the only other shot bunched at, and possibly locking, the float. Loaded floats are fine too. The float should be dotted right down to the point where it is difficult to see. What happens is that the crucian mouths the bait without lifting it, moves to one side, and pulls the float under as the line follows its own curve in the water. Or, if the crucian does lift the bait slightly, and hence the nearby small shot, the float will then be sensitive enough to respond and rise slightly through the surface; a more obvious movement when the float is dotted right down.
Many times you will see the float dancing and gyrating at the surface, and often these are the most difficult bites to hit. I think the cause of many of these bites is the shear sensitivity of the rig, in that it is set so delicately the mere waft off the crucians fins with cause it to give erratic movements. Always worth trying when this happens is a change of bottom shot position, either further away, or closer to, the hook. Also, changing the depth by a mere inch, deeper or shallower, can make a considerable difference too. 
Every time you fish for crucians, specially with float tackle, you have to go through a learning curve for that session, for their behaviour as they take the bait varies so much from one session to another. There are days when, to make a successful strike, you have to hit the fish when the float is moving along the surface, other days when you have to wait for the float to go under, and yet other days when it is best to hit them when the float rises slightly. You need an hour or two’s fishing for them on that day to suss out what is needed on that day, and until you have had that learning period it’s a case of trial and error. Even then you will not get it right every time.
Using float fishing methods like the one I’ve just described does not present a bait that is absolutely stationary on the bottom. Even when there is little or no drift the turbulence created by nearby fish, feeding or not, can be enough to make the hookbait move around a little. It appears there are days when this is the crucial factor where crucians are concerned, for on those days they will not take a bait that is not lying still on the bottom. On such days you would be forgiven for thinking that what I’ve written in the preceding paragraphs is the biggest load of bull you’ve ever read. Why? Because legering tactics are the answer on such days, and they yank the quiver-tip over and hook themselves so viciously you can’t believe that there are many other days when they take a bait with incredible delicacy.
Of course, there is the factor that the method itself lends itself to producing bolder bites. The drag of the rig, and the resistance of the quiver-tip, promote either a bait that is dropped altogether, or a bait that is taken on the run due to them being startled into bolting with it. Surprisingly, however, a sensitive leger rig produces bites just as vicious as a partial bolt rig.
For sensitivity there is nothing to beat a simple paternoster, where the bomb or feeder comes off a short 6in to 9in link combined with a 2ft to 3ft long hooklength. The junction is a water knot, so there is not even the weight of a swivel involved. Fished with the lightest quiver-tip you can get away with, or a swing-tip, you have a very sensitive set-up. When I want to present them with a partial bolt-rig I use the loop method, with a short loop, and a heavier quiver-tip. 
My last two sessions fishing for crucians typifies the species to a tee. The first session I float-fished, using a single grain of sweetcorn on a 14’s hook as bait, feeding hemp and sweetcorn over the groundbait mix I described earlier. It was the best session I’ve had this year, catching a nice bag of fish with several over 1.5lb and about five over 2lb to a best fish that day of 2.8. I missed a few bites and a few fish slipped the hook, but I went home feeling good. A week later I fished the same water and the same swim with the same tackle, the same method, and the same bait, over the same groundbait. With a different result. I dropped off a couple of fish and caught nothing. My mate, fishing the next swim just 5yds away, fished a groundbait feeder on a loop, with a quiver-tip rod, and a single grain of corn on a 10’s hook as bait, and bagged up. When he wasn’t looking his bites were pulling the rod off the rest.
I had as many fish in my swim at times as my mate did. In fact, they were probably the same fish moving through. He was using the same groundbait mix and fishing the same line from the bank. My bites, when I saw them, on really delicate float tackle, never developed properly, while his were vicious. There was absolutely no difference whatsoever in my presentation of the week before when I bagged up. I know that because my rod was never tackled down, but simply the rod unshipped and slipped into a quiver holdall, complete with float and rig left set. I was casting to exactly the same spot.
After two or three hours fishing it was blatantly obvious that the fish wanted a bait that was pinned to the bottom, although there didn’t appear to be any movement of my float from drift, or anything else for that matter. I could easily have changed to the winning method and caught fish myself, but I wanted to prove something (as well as you can prove anything in fishing). So I stuck it out and enviously watched my mate bag up. I tried all kinds of things to get a decent bite, even laying well on with the float tackle to emulate legering as much as possible. But no, it was not to be. Legering was all they were having that day.
So that’s crucians for you, contrary as hell. But love ’em or hate ’em, there are rarely two sessions the same, and that makes for some really interesting fishing. And what more can you ask for?
