Stick Float question

[Hugh Bailey]

Hi,
I'm planning my new season assault on a small river. I have been trying to float-fish as much as I can, as I enjoy it, am absolutely **** at it & want to improve. The river varies between maybe 20 -30 yards wide, is usually (in the summer) slow to very slow moving. Depths vary from maybe 7 or 8 feet max up to 3 or 4 in the swims I am targeting. Target species are mainly roach & chub, but outside possibility of a barbel.

My main attack will be stick-float. I used this last year to negligible effect – basically due to my lack of ability but I did have some success.

My question is related to the maximum distance (from the bank) that it is sensible to try to cast / fish the stick as opposed the waggler. I think maybe I was trying to fish it too far out & consequently mullering the presentation up. I have read all of Mark Wintle’s excellent articles on trotting but can’t seem to find a guide – I know I should be able to tell intuitively but it’s not always easy as teh conditions ( flow etc.) change.

Many thanks for any help.

 

[Mark Wintle]

It's probably best to keep to about 10 yards out max until you gain more experience, and that's in good conditions ie. a wind blowing off your back. At that range you can control the float and feed by hand rather than using a catapult. Casting underhand helps.

One factor than also helps is that the emphasis nowadays is on on relatively strong lines but the stick float really does work best, especially if you're learning, with 2lb main line and small shot. A 4 no. 4 stick shotted with no. 8 and 10 shot will provide very delicate presentation at which point (coupled with regular light feeding, it can work well.

 

[Hugh Bailey]

Hi Mark,

Many thanks for the reply.

I’ve been using 4lb line with 2.6lb hook-link up until now, to cope with the chub & some reasonably snaggy swims. I also hooked some sort of underwater missile which I couldn’t slow down at all.

I wonder if maybe 2lb may be too light, but I’ll spool up with it & give it a go – certainly the drag on the float will be less. I was certainly trying too far out before ( far bank) – I’ll try this with the waggler.

Regarding light feeding – maybe 20-30 maggots / casters a cast?

 

[Ray Daywalker Clarke]

Your 4lb line shouldn't be a problem at the distance Mark said. Make sure your line is greased well, conditions as Mark said, will always play a part in presentation, and as you come to terms with stick float fishing, you will learn when to make adjustment.

 

[alan whittington]

One other point Hugh,if the flow is light,as you suggest,you would probably find waggler presentation better,especially if chub are your main target,its a damn good method in pacey water if you have confidence in it,ive said this before on other threads on float fishing,but the spectrum of techniques within float fishing can make it very daunting,but it shouldnt be because experience gained is priceless,good luck and enjoy.

 

[jcp01]

Regarding light feeding – maybe 20-30 maggots / casters a cast?

Personally, this would be far too much. I have found that too much feed all the time results in the 'wrong' kind of bites, far better to start off with an initial hand full or two and then gradually decrease the feed amount to really frugal amounts, say three or four casters as the bites come along, only increasing again when bites tail off or become too fast to hit. The idea is to 'feel' the swim and only give what it requires when it requires it.

This is all just old time hemp fishing wisdom that you can bone up on in many old books, but it works wonderfully...!

 

[the indifferent crucian]

I'd agree with Rufus, it would be too easy to get the fish just snapping at the freebies rather than taking them with confidence. I don't quite understand what goes on down there, but too much food and they almost ' go through the motions ' rather than grab the bait.

Little and often is usually the way to get them in a competitive frame of mind, particularly in clear water. It helps if you can get the stuff in without 'skylining' yourself or spashing too much too.

Small balls of stickymag can be effective ( magotts rolled into a ball with Horlicks powder) but don't lick your fingers or get it on your tackle. Take some Wet-Wipes. If the flow is too strong to place stickymag accurately I think a small baitdropper would do the trick, just try to skim the surface to slow the dropper and kill the splash.

When the matchmen started using bottom end only floats for matches on rivers it was a revelation. Pretty well everybody else had to do it too tocompete with them.



I wonder if stickymag wasn't the inspiration behind the method feeder?

 

[Mark Wintle]

Feeding maggots or casters is far from an exact science but there are some guidelines that can help.

Roach generally need the least feed, dace need a bit more and a big shoal of big chub can take all you can throw at them. This is further tempered by the flow of the river; a very fast river will wash excessive feed away.

Then you have to understand how many fish you have in front of you. A small shoal of roach - 30 fish - could be overfed with less than a 1/4 pint of bait yet a huge shoal of dace could take 6 pints.

From memory feeding 10 maggots once a minute equates to about a pint in five hours. Understanding your bait requirements is not always easy but important. When I match fished we had to try to get this right. I've run out of bait in at least one match albeit with 5 minutes to go having fed 4 pints, and once scrounged a lot of leftover casters on a Sunday to then feed 10 pints in a 3 hour mid week evening match, winning easily with 6 chub on a night that most anglers had serious problems with minnows (not me!). So you can see that sometimes a pint of casters can be ample and that at other times you need much more. The problem on big river matches was that you could never be sure what you'd need so had to cover all eventualities from the best chub pegs to ones where scratching out a few dace or roach was the best you could expect, and often meant doubling up on casters, maggots and hemp.

Hemp is another ball game altogether; there are several successful approaches. Very sparing and regular can work unless the roach get too competitive and dash around giving lots of missable bites - that's when to feed a load in to lay down a bed for the roach to browse more slowly. I've had the same with maggots and roach, and cured it by only feeding a pouchful every 20 minutes.

I've used stickymag for carp to increase the feed rate when feeder fishing but I don't think it's that useful on a river unless fishing at extreme range.

Back to the stick float question. I think it's better to find a non snaggy area with lots of dace and roach, use a light line, and gain experience with the method before trying to tackle less forgiving fish such as big chub near snags.

 

[the indifferent crucian]

I bow to your match experience Mark.
I was remembering a time I fished the Wey on a slack day and the stickymag seemed to work so well. It meant a steady trail of bait breaking off and going gently downstream in the same run all the time and the fish just seemed to be lining up for my hook.

Perhaps just one of those lucky days we all dream of?


I shall be trying it again next week, but by tradition, I don't ever do well on the 16th. Still always get up earlier on that than any other day of the year, though. You'd think I'd learn

 

[Graham Whatmore]

Mark is, as usual, absolutely spot on regarding feeding. The golden rule with feeding is to feed the amount of feed required to get the bites, this can be as little as half a dozen maggots a chuck to a small handful if the chub and barbel are lining up. Never start off feeding a lot of maggots always start with a minimum and increase as the bites increase and always feed to the amount of fish in front of you.

With regards to line, if there are snags and maybe barbel you really need to be using something like a 4lb line and providing you can still get the bites a hooklength of 3 - 3.5lb with an 18 or 16 hook. My experience is that anglers are much more line shy than fish are and if they are feeding the size of line is almost irrelevant and small hooks seem to hold better than big hooks.

 

[Tee-Cee]

I always found an upstream wind was ideal for the stick.Fishing a river like the Thames I also found the 'shirt-button' style of shotting pattern was ideal and holding back the float several times in a trot normally induced a take as the bait rose slightly in the stream....

I reacll back in the 60's taking a 40lb bag of good roach fishing the Remenham stretch of the Thames belw Henley bridge using this method-bait elderberry/caster with light hemp feed...a lovely way of fishing though!

Does anyone else have any thoughts on shotting patterns for the standard stick and the wire stemmed stick....?

 

[Graham Whatmore]

Depends on how and at what depth the fish are feeding. Flexibility is the key which is why it is always good policy to use number 8 shot because it slides easier and makes adjusting patterns quicker. Anything from equally spaced out from top to bottom to bulked at the bottom, they all work on their day. Watch a good match angler fishing the stick and he will be constantly fiddling with his shotting in an effort to induce bites.

What I am saying really is that no one pattern suits all conditions and situations.

 

[alan whittington]

There are many 'wrangles' in shotting a stick float,also length of hooklink and size of hook,not least if the bed of the river is a bit 'catchy',which wouldnt allow clean trots(try a long hooklink and a small hook,you will be surprised how effective it is),as for tackle,ive no problems with light gear for barbel up to 6-7lb as long as the snag situation allows(and i dont mean fish for barbel with 2lb line,but if the odd one comes along whilst fishing for roach and chub so be it).

 

[Graham Whatmore]

The stick was developed by northern match anglers for match angling where the target was mainly roach and like sized fish it wasn't intended for fishing for big hard fighting fish like barbel.

With the sort of lines that match anglers used (usually 2-2.5lb with 1-1.7lb hooklengths) it could handle bigger fish such as chub quite easily. When the Severn barbel started to show in matches and pleasure catches it even handled the barbel which averaged 1-2lb in size but a 7lb barbel is a whole different ball game. When they grew bigger I, like a lot of Severn match anglers have played and landed the odd medium sized barbel but if the truth is to be known we lost the majority of barbel because they were just too big for the fine match tackle we employed when float fishing.

For this reason alone I think it is only fair to increase the size of your tackle to accommodate those bigger barbel and though there is nothing stopping you using 6lb or bigger mainline it just doesn't sit right in my mind when using a stick float, far better to use say an Avon float which is just as delicate when it comes to showing bites of smaller fish.

 

[alan whittington]

Just to say Benny Ashurst invented the stick float i believe for fishing on the drop on northern canals for roach with caster,or so his book has led me to believe anyway Graham.As for fishing deliberately for barbel of any size with 2lb line would be foolhardy,but as i said earlier if you are fishing for roach and chub,4-5lb lines would definitely reduce your success,and if fish are lost in open,snag free water,generally tackle isnt balanced or technique is poor,for all that is required is patience and alertness,but immediately snags are involved(which they generally are,as thats where fish like to live)forget it,as i say though if your roaching,your not exactly expecting 'berties'.

 

[flightliner]

far better to use say an Avon float which is just as delicate when it comes to showing bites of smaller fish.

Graham.you'r dead right when you advise the avon for the circumstances described-- perfect choice (tho a bigger stic will do the job), back to the smaller fish however, last season on the Trent myself and a friend were doing really well with the stick, but a move onto another strech gave us a wind that was constantly coming downstream and across which made the stic rather awkward to control despite the use of backshotting to sink the line immediately behind the float. We opted for small avons which were the perfect solution in those conditions, these floats scored well over the stic and I would heartily reccomend anyone fishing one of the wider/windy rivers to aquire some just in case you find similar conditions. Also-- a rough rule of thumb when shotting "shirt button" style is to place one number eight every foot of depth but as mentioned by others on here you must always be prepared to move them around-- watch an experienced river float angler and he is doing it often thro-out the days fishing.

 

[Tee-Cee]

Yes,I agree with Graham-the Avon is a much better option with the heavier line and if shotted to suit the conditions in from of you can be just as sensitive...
Back in the 60's I used Avons down near Ringwood to trot for 8/10oz dace and roach whilst matchfishing and they did the job just fine.......also hooked the odd barbel and more interestingly the (what I was told was)odd sea trout but thats another story...suffice to say I lost every single fish!!

 

[alan whittington]

Ever heard of a waggler Flightliner,some of the top Trent matchmen made a killing on it,avons are brilliant floats where the pace is right,pretty poor when a low steady river is encountered,on the upper Lea(Hatfield upstream) i used to fish 3 no.4 sticks,with only 3no.8s and a no.12 down the line,maximum(sometimes less),and caught virtually every species available,it isnt possible to generalise,for virtually every swim needs a different presentation on any given day,thats what makes it so interesting.

 

[Ray Daywalker Clarke]

Well there are always a few options with the stickfloat, the main one being it is easy to change the float as they are fixed by rubbers top and bottom, so even if your fishing the same river and move swims, you might need to change the float and set up.

I like to fish with a Chubber float myself, good in fast and slow flow, easy to control, and that is the key to stickfloat fishing, Control.

 

[flightliner]

Ever heard of a waggler Flightliner,some of the top Trent matchmen made a killing on it,avons are brilliant floats where the pace is right,pretty poor when a low steady river is encountered,on the upper Lea(Hatfield upstream) i used to fish 3 no.4 sticks,with only 3no.8s and a no.12 down the line,maximum(sometimes less),and caught virtually every species available,it isnt possible to generalise,for virtually every swim needs a different presentation on any given day,thats what makes it so interesting.

wagglers-- yes I have a rather large compartment in my float box solely for them alone. I was using them on the Trent some time before they became popular .( as were others)
Over the years I have taken many a good bag of roach on them particularly on the tidal reaches. If I can fish a swim with one and the wind is upstream its possible to let the gear trip downriver just a little slower than the currant and the result s can be staggeringly good, for the life of me I still cant see why you hardly ever see a float angler on the Trent these days.
Once in a match I hooked and landed a large carp on very light waggler gear that gave me the last laugh at the wiegh in after suffering rather a lot of verbal before and during the contest but the whole story I'll tell sometime on another thread if anyone is interested. Last winter I used the waggler on the river but it was hard on account of the severe weather but only a couple of weeks ago I had a bag of roach well over thirty pounds
using wagg n magg.
I dont know the lea Ian so what s a slow pace to you may seem like a dead stop to me but you are right in saying that you cant generalise as every swim is differant, and the guy learning this and remembering it will master the stic a lot faster.