Nicking a swim

Just suppose you knew that an angler was prevailing a swim for the start of the rivers opening, would you be there at first light and nick the swim or let him have it

This is a hypothetical thread not something I've known anyone do

Personally I think if he's done the work he should get the swim

What if two anglers are prevailing the swim? What the **** is prevailing a swim?

** Pre-baiting *** i think

Oh yeah of course!

Chuck a couple soap bars into the swim, on the evening of 15th June and next day fish about 40-50 yards upstream.




















(all said in jest)

Lord Paul of Sheffield said:

Just suppose you knew

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Just pretend you didn't know.....

---------- Post added at 16:41 ---------- Previous post was at 16:37 ----------

Is pre-baiting an accepted form of reserving a swim? How do you know when the pre-baiter intends to fish? Is it ok to fish before them and vacate the swim when they arrive. What if the pre-baiter pre-baits two swims, are they both reserved? I think this is a much bigger issue than it at first appears.

---------- Post added at 16:43 ---------- Previous post was at 16:41 ----------

What about if you genuinely didn't know and had set up in the pre-baited swim then the pre-baiter arrives, are you obliged by the unwritten rule to move?

---------- Post added at 16:45 ---------- Previous post was at 16:43 ----------

Would you be upset if you didn't fish the pre-baited swim but another angler went in the swim after you left it empty and before the pre-baiter turned up.

---------- Post added at 16:47 ---------- Previous post was at 16:45 ----------

Should you hide behind a tree near the pre-baited swim and then nonchantly step into the swim just as the pre-baiter arrives.

---------- Post added at 16:49 ---------- Previous post was at 16:47 ----------

Should you put a "no fishing by order of the bailiff" sign in the swim before the pre-baiter arrives.

Lord Paul of Sheffield said:

Just suppose you knew that an angler was prevailing a swim for the start of the rivers opening, would you be there at first light and nick the swim or let him have it

This is a hypothetical thread not something I've known anyone do

Personally I think if he's done the work he should get the swim

Click to expand...

I suppose the key phrase in your question is "suppose you knew". It would be one thing to accidentally to fish the swim but a completely underhand and sh*ty thing to do on purpose.

Yes the key is you knew the swim was being pre baited

Depends how unscrupulous you are; I wouldn't dream of doing it.

So if a person continually pre-baits a swim does that mean that no one else can ever fish it?

Of course not, but if someone baits a swim up for a few days prior to fishing isn't it only fair to give them first crack at it? No-one has the right to "own" a swim, however.

Depends. If I'd sweated cobs preparing a swim [like raking out a ton of weed] then I would hope that effort would be respected. Likewise with pre-baiting. I would leave a polite sign and hope others would respect it. I certainly would

But only for the first few days...then all deals are off.

How sad is anyone who walks the banks spotting people pre-baiting?
Can't see many bothering....

......in both senses.

Never nick a swim, pool or run, whatever you're after.

I did have the joy in 2007 of nicking a visiting, heavy pre-baiting, sponsored "Name" fisher's fish, however.

He was piling boilies into a short piece of river, you could call it a very fast gravel shallow falling into a deep 5- to 8-foot hole, in early May and continued right through to the 16th "off". I knew the spot well of old, knew that when catapulting baits up into the shallow, MOST would drift down into the hole as expected, a hole that always held a few barbel and any number of hungry chub, fish that in the unfished-for, pre-season, spawning period would rush upstream even in daylight to nail the plopping boilies or rattling pellets and show themselves. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy - or so our Name thought....

But SOME baits would over-shoot the hole, run down its fast midstream shallow outer edge and continue down for some twenty yards to a gravel depression in heavy ranunculus, where barbel also lay unknown and unnoticed and would on occasion feed like billy-o on stuff coming down from 35 yards above.

Our name caught any number of good-ish nuisance chub and a few small barbel that first night of the new season, his reel was going when I arrived on the water in the 4.00am dawn and dropped my bait into the hole a good thirty-odd yards below him.

I wasn't there long - 13 pound 9 ounce barbel played in silence with the ratchet of my Speedia off for total stealth.

He saw me lift the rested fish out of the water in my landing net in the full light of day twenty minutes or so later and watched me take its vital statistics, put it into a sling and on to the Jennings scales.

Thump. Best fish, to my knowledge, in that pretty poor piece of river.

He tried to put a brave and cheery face on it, he really did, but "gutted" or "queasy psittacine", I believe, were more apt words for his "the bottom has just fallen out of my world" overall mental and physical state.

I left a few minutes afterwards. He didn't catch my name.

robtherake said:

if someone baits a swim up for a few days prior to fishing isn't it only fair to give them first crack at it?

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I dunno really, I don't fish anywhere were this happens (well I don't think I do) so it ain't an issue for me, but I would have thought that a swim is available to all on a first come first served basis and that if pre-baiting was to "book" a swim then what happens when an angler turns up to fish and all the swims have little pre-baited stickers on them?

Times change. When I was a boy pre baiting did go on and anglers of that era would almost certainly respect a known pre baited swim. Nowadays I doubt many bother unless access is very restricted/controlled. On more generally "open" waters I think anybody pre-baiting would be very naive to think their efforts would be respected and pretty daft to advertise the fact. I'm speaking here of the traditional old school,pre-June 16th,buckets of mash type pre-baited swim not a long term baiting programme which is quite different.

On balance is it actually worth doing nowadays ? Generally not I think. I've never,ever seen a "pre-baited" sign on a swim in 45 years fishing. If I did I'd fish elsewhere but then I was taught manners as a boy.

Yes. Back in the mid 1980s, much influenced by my own experiences of piling in fist-sized and much much smaller Ragi millet boilies for mahseer in South India, of Mike Wilson's [corn] Baiting Pyramid, of some things that the elusive "Black Water" Kevin (who together with his girl was living at my place after an Indian epic) and his mate Lord Pete had told me on the banks of close-to-home Wraysbury 1, I took on the Lower Wey and Civil Service stretches of the Kennet [Big Barbel Central that I had fished since the mid-late 1970s with a B.C.C. member] with pressure-cooked, sweetened / flavoured / sometimes coloured maize.

"I'm going to clean up....", I thought.

A then wife left for Europe to visit her parents for a near fortnight; I fished 10 or 11 days / evenings / nights straight, wrecking myself in the process.

Nothing, except a then unheard of, ruddy 7.75-pound common carp.

I turned to Thames bleak after that.

In terms of a river, unless i was pre-baiting a completely unknown or remote swim i would not expect to get that swim come June 16th unless i beat others to it. Its not difficult to identify the best swims and i would always assume others have also done so - unless it was in the realms of a 2 mile walk off in an unpopular water where i might stand a better chance.

In my opinion, if you cant get there early enough on the critical day its your own fault, irrespective of how much prebaiting you have put in previously. Moral is, dont prebait if you cant get the swim.

If he cant get there on time, more fool him. There is a guy local, so protective of "his" swim, which is across the road from his house, that he will get violent towards people that fish in it. As far as i'm concerned, you cant claim a swim on a stretch of river thats open to day tickets. First come first serve, end of.

Isn't this all about competition?

If you think your in competition with other anglers then taking advantage of someones hard and expensive work might (just) be acceptable.

But it is hardly good sportsmanship or indeed ethical.


I never fish in competition with anyone and I really enjoy seeing other anglers catch good fish and gain a lot of pleasure from their successes, so if someone's in the swim I would like there are always plenty of other places for me to fish.

I believe that when the scales are balanced at the end of your fishing life you will still have caught your fair share of fish whether you moved in on someone else's hard work or not.

.
BTW a bar of soap is not an effective method of moving fish out of a swim.