ROACH Any ideas how tackle this situation

Went fishing yesterday afternoon at a local pond which is crammed to the hilt with roach.
When fishing it in the winter it wasn't too bad and you could catch loads of your sort of average size roach with the odd descent one chucked in for good measure.

When I fished there yesterday I caught about 60 roach and sticklebacks with the roach being the same size as the stickle backs and i only caught 5 roach any bigger one of which was fairly descent size about 8 ounces

There are so many tiny fish if you throw a few maggots in the edge the sticklebacks and baby roach attack them and you can see them fighting over them.

Is there anyway to try and get less attention from the small fish as they drive you mad your float is constantly bobbing up and down with the attention of the small fish which usually haven't even got the hook in there mouth and are just nipping the end, yesterday i just kept stricking bringing the float closer and closer to the bank untill i hooked one.

there's that many small one's in there that you can lower a bunch of maggots in the margins and pull out 6 sticklebacks without eveing hooking them they just hang on like little terriers.

I was using 2lb hook length, size 18 hooks and fishing just touching bottom

Lip hook a roach on a size6

Sounds like perch paradise

Try a grain of sweetcorn on a size 16 hook.

Try plastic grubs on the hook,worked well for me this week in a similar situation.

that's an idea michael i'll take some sweetcorn next time.

Lee i haven't caught any perch in there ever, but i did here that someone caught one, if they are in there and in small numbers they could be huge, you maybe right though it could be worth a try and see what turns up, I always already thinking of trying it yesterday it's a bit of mystery as to what is in there as it isn't a club water, it's a fairly large pond in the middle of a new housing estate, i presume the water was there before the houses.

i've also heard that someone once caught a brace of large 6lb chub in there if they are in there they are bound to be feeding on the tiddlers don't you think.

there are also a few carp in there, have carp ever been know to eat other fish as i cant see any fish going hungry with such an abundabce of bite sized food available???

Best thing is hardly anyone else fishes there i'm usually the only one fishing

fred what advantage does using the plastic grubs have

Use to fish a water with similar problems. After a few months of frustration we finally found a method which produced some pleasing catches - until the pit was sold and has now been filled in.
The good thing was the water was very clear, so on the right days we could observe the fish feeding in our swims. We noticed the bigger fish would only feed confidently once large numbers of small fish were also feeding.
Our best results came by selecting fairly deep swims, and attracting the small fish by feeding "little and often" with pinkies or liquidised bread. This would bring them up in the water. It was then a case of fishing light bomb rods with larger baits (introducing some offerings) like bread flake, corn or casters on a long hooklink. A lobworm tail would also work, and mayby pick up a bonus perch or chub

Sounds like its crying out to be fished with hemp and tares.

Or

Try loosefeeding squatts on a regular basis in one area of the swim and fish casters on the bottom in another. The squatts should keep the attenention of the fry away from the dormant casters on the bottom after the better fish.

Or

Fish lighter hooklinks and smaller hooks it may be that your presentation just isn't good enough to fool anything but the juvenial fish.

thats given me plenty to think about, I'll try some of these ideas out.

Nicky,the small roach/rudd give up and the bait is therefore available for the bigger fish,they cannot suck plastic and leave you with a skin!!!!

Only thing I would add to the above is to try and fish a little further out than where you are feeding, maybe 1-2m, as the bigger fish wil probably "back-off" from the feeding frenzy of the small fish.

Double Caster may work if the fish are really small. If you keep getting shelled casters, then corn, breadflake or dendrabena worms might work. As Fred says, pastic baits can be great too.

Breadpunch worked for me yesterday, picked up a couple of crucians through the ammassed roach and rudd hoards too. I had to set my float so it only showed a millimetre above the surface to hit the small bites and used a fairly heavy shot to sink the hook past the smaller fish as quick as possible. Even so it was still taken on the drop more often then not. Great fun all day long )

you could try chucking in the odd full slice of bread, hopefully the tiny fish will swarm round this and as the slice drifts out of your swim they will follow it.



and if the slice suddenly disapears in one big slurp, get your carp tackle out !

This used to work on the Grand Union canal for what we called then big Roach,about 1lb to 1lb 8oz.You would feed a couple of handfuls of hemp topped up every now and again with a few grains.Over this you would fish a piece of cheesepaste about the size of a 5p coin.Fish it layed about a foot with a no8 10 inches from the hook and a no 10 4-6 nches from the hook.Canal greys were the float of choice.Then sit back and wait.Not many bites but big Roach or bigger than the norm.

try double caster in stead of maggots wiv 16-14 hook or personally i wood use bread flake on a size 14-12 hook, hope this helps.

Try fishing a small cube of breadcrust, with some of the white attached; a quarter of an inch piece will fit nicely on a size 12 hook. This can be float-fished with a single shot about BB size three inches from the hook, using a float with a longish antenna lift-fashion.

Alternatively, use a very small open-ended feeder filled with broken pieces of the white crumb from inside the loaf. Accurate casting is essential! The feeder can be fished at whatever range you feel necessary; it's not exclusively a long-range technique.

Use a lightweight bobbin rather than a quivertip for bite detection as roach, unlike bream, often drop a bait if they feel the slightest resistance.

AAAAAAGH

Tried again yesterday even worse than last week.

Changed hooklink to 1.45lb 0.08 diameter
changed to size 20 hooks

Couldn't get any casters as my tackle shop didn't have any so took maggots, bread punch, bread flake, sweetcorn, hempseed, rubber maggots.

sweetcorn just wasn't producing the bites

maggots were getting swarmed by the inch long tiddlers and my float was constantly dibbing as soon as the bait hit the water, bread punch and flake the same.

Fished further out which only went to make it even harder to hit the lightning fast bites

rubber maggots didn't really help as i wasn't getting skinned just that 100's of tiddlers attacked soon as the mags hit the water, i witnessed this again by chucking some groundbait with some maggots in the margins it was unbeleivable to see the amount of small fish that swarmed to it in seconds.

I was feeding regular hemp for hours and eventually i switched to hemp on the hook which produced bites instantly and the biggest fish of the day on the first cast but was very tricky to use if you missed a bite you would have to reel back in to re-bait your hook. It was also the first ever fish i have caught on hemp.

Has anyone ever tried supergluing a grain of hemp to the hook as i thought this might work.

My next plan of attack is to use a sensitive quiver tip or a light bobbin because maybe the float is just too sensitive and maybe this way only the bites from the proper fish will register?

I always use the most sensitive float in my box for roach dotted as far down as the conditions will allow, might it be worth using a thick waggler so that the bites from the tiny fish dont register as much?

I dont want to give up as i was talking to a friend of mine who fished there during the week who told me he caught a 2lb roach and 3lb goldfish on the waggler, plus a 5lb carp on the maggot feeder, jammy sod.

I also had one sharp tug on the carp rod, using the method feeder and 8mm boile pulled the line from the clip but that was it.

frustrating day all in all

I would order some casters for next time and try them.

A key thing you mentioned was the lightning fast bites. I suspect these may be the fish you are looking for so teh trick is to try and slow the bites down.

You could try cutting back the feed once they start. Instead of a shoal of fish darting at everything in sight, less feed can sometimes cause them to slow down and the bites may be easier to hit.

It could be that you tackle isn't sensitive enough. Use a fine guage wire hook (kamasan B511 for instance), or that your shotting was too cumbersome (try No.11's instead of No.8's for instance) or it could be your mainline (too thick?), or that you stil haven't dotted teh float down enough. Spread your shot out so the hookbait drops at the same speed as the loosefeed.

I've seen loads (probably most on some fisheries) whose idea of dotted down is reducing the amount of float showing from 1" to 1/2". That's not enough.

Enterprise do some artificial hemp - but you'll need to balance it with the right guage hook to make it sink properly. Hemp bites are notoriously fast though.

Nicky

I agree with everything Matt has said the fast bites can be from larger fish on the drop and they may be feeling your tackle and getting rid of the bait faster than you can strike. If you have a pole these bites are a lot easier to hit but good presentation of the bait is essential. If you are still using maggots you can try floating maggots which are easy to prepare by just covering some ordinary maggots with water but only about 1/8 th of an inch. These will negate the weight of the hook and help to slow down the decent of the bait through the water, black casters have a similar effect.

Personally though I would fish by feeding hemp and using tares on a size 14 hook. The tares will definatly sort out the size of the fish but the bites are likly to be fast and again if you own a pole it will make hitting the bites much easier. Feed the hemp little and often and be prepared for the fish to feed midwater. However it will be easier at first if you can keep them feeding on the bottom as it is a lot easier to present the bait correctly there. To achieve this feed more bait less often but on some waters even this trick doesn't work especially in the height of summer.
You shouldn't need a lot of bait, normally a pint of hemp and a generous handfull of tares are enough for a days roach fishing. The benifits of using tares as a hookbait are their ability to remain on the hook for ages and that they are impervious to the attentions of small fry, bigger fish such as tench and carp can also be caught on them.