Rivers after rain

[rich66]

How long after a spell of heavy rain, before rivers become fishable again, I know it’s a bit of a how longs a piece of string question but any thoughts ?
Colour of the water, flow rate etc ?
I’m off after Saturday and the local forecast has the rain stopping after Saturday afternoon. Didn’t know whether to try the canalised stretch of the Soar as it’s near, or slope off down the lakes again.

 

[sam vimes]

Much depends on the river in question, the method you want to use, and the fish species. No river is ever truly unfishable, though it might be dangerous and distinctly unwise to do so.

 

[john step]

Do you know about the river level charts? I don't know how to do links so some one on here may help. The Gov.co sites are useful. You can have a few on your bookmarks and if you visit regularly and get to know whats happening pretty accurately by marrying up the graph reading with your own observations.

 

[ian g]

here's a link for the Soar , not sure exactly where you fish

Shoothill GaugeMap

 

[rich66]

here's a link for the Soar , not sure exactly where you fish

Shoothill GaugeMap

Thanks around Thurmaston mainly. I’ve got a leicester Amal ticket so it goes almost to Loughborough I think. Just Thurmaston is 10 minutes from home

 

[ian g]

If you type river soar in the search bar it'll give you all the options.

Shoothill GaugeMap

 

[nottskev]

There's no simple answer to that question. But it's worth building up a sense of what your local river is like at various levels, so you can look up the level and know before you go what kind of species/method are on the cards in the conditions. That means visiting the water at various levels, seeing how it is, and noting the EA river level at the time. After a while, you'll get to know how it is and what you can sensibly fish for.

To give an example, on the lower Derwent (which I don't bother to fish these days due to lack of fish), my notes tell me that swim x fishes ok with 0.6m, but if it gets to 0.75m they won't be there and swim y is better. On certain Trent swims I go to, 0.8 is spot-on, but 0.95 and above makes a good catch very unlikely. And so on. The river level information is a really good guide to what/where/how to fish.

Thinking about your local Soar stretch, and what you can hope to catch when the river is well up after rain, it might be worth enquiring which areas bream hang out in in high water. There are times when it's worth fishing for bream ( I say bream because the barbel are not so common on the Soar these days), for instance, but it would be a waste of time to fish for roach.

 

[barbelboi]

It depends what you're fishing for. I've usually found that a rising river is good for barbel, a fining down river better for most other species..................

 

[rich66]

Thinking about your local Soar stretch, and what you can hope to catch when the river is well up after rain, it might be worth enquiring which areas bream hang out in in high water. There are times when it's worth fishing for bream ( I say bream because the barbel are not so common on the Soar these days), for instance, but it would be a waste of time to fish for roach.

There’s a good head of 3-4lb bream on that stretch, roach Perch and a few chub if you can find them, plus tench even carp.

There is a boat yard that sits out of the main flow that might be best place to start.