Strike timing?

It’s not a subject I can recall reading very much about in general terms yet we all know it's not just about walloping the rod around as soon as the float disappears or the tip moves.

I suppose this might be a bit of an “olde” world type of topic given the ongoing popularity of bolt rigs along with carp and barbel fishing.

But…

That aside and spurred on by the crucian thread and my own observations, what have you learned in your years of experience in relation to timing your strike to suit the characteristics of different species, methods and baits?

If I had to pick just one it would be not to snatch and instead to let the bite develop.

We talk about how finicky bites can be especially with species like roach and often it is the case, I also wonder if we sometimes snatch too soon at those that frustrate us so much… We see the signs of a fish tentatively checking out a hookbait so it’s only natural to assume they do the same with loose offerings if the presentation is right and something has to be a differential, namely whether or not the bait whizzes off out of sight upon a subtle test.

The one thing of almost archaic but perfect design which has stood the test of time and for good reason imo is the perch bobber, capable of showing all the plucks along with the more confident attempts before nothing less than full commitment sees it disappearing for good.

So,

Whether it be big or small bait float fishing for shy biting species or long tail feeder fishing for bream, what has been your most valuable observation of strike timing?

Instinct............

Crikey. Thats a difficult one. I guess the fish control the angler in so much as its the speed of the bite that forces a reaction.

Sometimes the float almost seems to change shape imperceptibly in the film prior to a bite giving warning or perhaps the feeling of sixth sense of a bite...if that doesn't sound too airy fairy? Or a slight ripple?

Then when it rips away you just have to react. I think the fish play with us sometimes.

If I were doing my usual thing and float fishing I try to leave bites to develop at first to get a sense of what they are doing on the day. Hopefully I'll settle into a rhythm and start to use that instinct/intuition. Very difficult to do particularly on a cold winters day when you might only get one or two chances anyway.
Species and size influence timing a lot, once you have a feel for what's going on.

Forgive me for ignoring this thread, so far - I read the title as being for/against the timing of NHS industrial action mg:

I'll contribute when I've settled down and had a good sleep!

I always thought the perch bob was the most useless, angler-catching trinket ever sold, so I obviously need to recalibrate my thoughts on this...

binka said:

The one thing of almost archaic but perfect design which has stood the test of time and for good reason imo is the perch bobber, capable of showing all the plucks along with the more confident attempts before nothing less than full commitment sees it disappearing for good.

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Swordsy gave me two of his hand made "Bobbers" at a PaSC fish in a couple of years back, trouble is, they're too good to use for catching fish and I have an undistinguished record for float longevity mg:

I most frequently use a quill float; I find I just have to find out what works best on the day, sometimes I have to wait and let the float disappear, other times strike early and all manner of in between.
Its odd, I can fish the same swim, the same species and the way they took it last week is different they will take it this week. I also find I have to vary the way I present the bait, especially bread, point exposed, point buried, small flake, large flake, crust etc.
So I suppose really there is no complete right way for me. However, I do like the quill fished lift method, I like it to lift and then glide away and then a nice pull into the fish more than a strike.
Legering I find more difficult to time the strike but usually early as they often seem to drop the bait quicker with this I find.

I don't think there's an easy catch-all (forgive the pun) answer to this question, but that's fishing right?

In general, like rubio said, I think it's best to be patient and see how the fish are feeding on the day, adapt to that and get into a rhythm.

Obviously it depends on the type of water and target species. Fishing a small, fast flowing river for dace I'd strike at any lightning fast knock or dip as that's the only chance you get! On a nice calm estate lake targeting tench I'd be sitting on my hands, ignoring the knocks, small dips, and slight sideways movements and wait for the full lift, sail away or dive under.

Whatever the striking tactic, to me float fishing is the most enjoyable method of fishing. In fact to me, float fishing is fishing.

This is a fascinating topic and one which has puzzled me for years - when to strike? It's been a key topic recently - particularly with some of us starting stillwater campaigns to chase Cru's, Roach and Tincas - with those fiddly little up a bit/down a bit, up a bit/down a bit twitchy bits of bites - so different to the bites when trotting on a 'full' river - your float is either there - or it isn't - strike!

That's one of the keys - switching your mindset from river to stillwater at this time of year Back when I started fishing - not much tackle - trotting maggots down the river for Dace and Grayling - trying to avoid the minnows - choice of floats was easy:
- it was either the Grayling Bob,
- or the Peacock quill - usually reserved for the Roach and Gudgeon in the slower, deeper stretches,

I used to wonder why I had more success with the Grayling/Perch Bob.

Alan Tyler said:

I always thought the perch bob was the most useless, angler-catching trinket ever sold, so I obviously need to recalibrate my thoughts on this...

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My Theory is that the Bob acts a bit like a 'bolt-float' - in that the resistance of the body initiates the hooking and the subsequent reaction of the fish provides the cue to strike! It's a binary decision - fish on/not on - and the visibility of the float helps - particularly in streamy water.
For a youngster - it was a boon.

When fishing slower stretches, the Bob would signal interest in the bait as a series of rings/ripples, but seldom result in a successful hookup - unless your strike was just at the right time - the bulk of the float body which is the key to it's success in fast-water trotting was it's very downfall in slow water - where the timing of the strike was the key!

Fishing stillwater is a different ballgame altogether - it's all about timing of the strike - or is it? How come pellet/waggler techniques - fishing up in the water - are so successful - particularly using the mushroom-topped floats? The bolt-float effect is blamed - causing the fish to hook themselves! No need to strike! - Just reel -em in!

If you're fed-up of trying to time the strike of fiddly little up/down...up...down...u.p... bites - give up and try p-w up in the water! mg:

If the float moves I react, I never wait for a bite to develop. To my mind if the float moves it is registering fish that's a bite.
I never mind missing bites especially when pole fishing because I think a stationary bait is useless, at least missing bites forces anglers to work the bait.
Timing is the same in any sport if you get something wrong IE miss a bite in fishing your timing is out. Just the same as fluffing a shot in golf.

Crucian fishing if you wait for a bite to develop it mostly will never happen on the venue I fish. Most bite are just in my case small lifts or dips of the float tip.
Also if the hooklengths, hook size or float is too heavy you would have to wait for the odd suicide Crucian and never see a bite from the majority of fish.

Tip fishing for the last few years most bites have been strong pulls that hook themselves, that is of course in summer. But then commercial fish are easy according to some.
Winter bomb fishing with popped up baits bites are nothing more than little twitches on the tip as fish mouth the bait, even bottom baits only get slow short pulls in my experience.
Using the term strike in fishing has probably never been more wrong, giving anglers new to the sport the wrong impression.

Alan Tyler said:

I always thought the perch bob was the most useless, angler-catching trinket ever sold, so I obviously need to recalibrate my thoughts on this...

Click to expand...

Perch bobs.... I used to use them as a kid before I knew better. HOWEVER...
I now use them for ...well perch!!

They are just the job for a tiny live or dead un. Just like a pike float in miniature.

For me there are two aspects to this question: What prompts you to strike? ie unusual actions of the float or tip, which cause you to instictively strike, all of which have been very well explained in the posts so far. The second part of the equation, as I see it, is how do you conduct the strike?. In my case, when fishing the waggler, it is a long progressive upwards movement of the rod just above parallel to the river surface. The intention being to quickly pick up any loose line and make positive contact with the fish. With the stick float, which enables you to fish much tighter to the float than the waggler, a short gentle but firm sweep of the rod, in a similar direction, is adequate. On the face of it you would think striking on the tip would be simple, but that is not always the case. The sucess rate can often depend on the length of hook length being used. One method I found very successful on the river, when using the tip, was to fish to a bow in the line. This was achieved by tightening up to a the feeder that just held the deck, then paying out anything up to two yards of line, dependent on the strength of the current. The result was that the current took up the slack line and put a nice bend in the tip. Bites were nearly always drop backs, and unmissable. It worked an absolute dream for skimmers on the Trent in my match fishing days. Sadly when I first began using a pole, none of these river tactics worked. It took a lot of time, pole tip tangles and lost fish before I was able to supress my natural river fishing reactions and instinctively just lift the pole up slightly instead. Pete.

as a carp angler i find i am not very good at this float fishing malarky BUT! when i ventured out for the first time with a pole on T Cut and struggling to hook a gudgeon or roach there was an old geez a couple of pegs up (well, i say old but i was mid fifties, he must have been 100 or so lol) he showed me how to use Mucelin to make the line float and form a loop on the surface betwix float and tip, then he said to let the float go and just watch the loop and when that started to go under just lift. thats what i do now when cut fishing and it has never failed (well hardly anyhoo) :wh

For F1,s ,that feed a lot like crucians,a very gentle lift,at the slightest dink on the float,no strike!!,Usually when the float sails away,its a liner,the tiny dinks are the actual bite,it requires immense concentration for 5 hours

greenie62 said:

Forgive me for ignoring this thread, so far - I read the title as being for/against the timing of NHS industrial action mg:

I'll contribute when I've settled down and had a good sleep!

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Lol in general fishing?

I mentioned on the ' how did you ' thread that I fished for roach this past week using giant hemp. TBH fishing this bait is still in its infancy for me as it's still a work in progress around hooks and shotting patterns.
Float type is also under consideration simply because the bite type is ( generally speaking ) not those normally found with standard hemp. I have tried many different floats including those with long antennas ( both above the water and dotted down ) and carrying differing amounts of shot. With varying degrees of success they all work, but none are fool, or fish proof ....some are gradual sinking and some gone in an instant, BOTH of which can be missed !!
In the main a long antenna ABOVE the water ( where conditions allow ) together with a bottom shot at least 6" from the hook tend to give ' long ' bites, but the super fast bite still occurs....

So, there I was, sitting on my fishing chair trying to come up with an alternative. I raked around the float box and found some peacock floats of various lengths BUT all with an insert antenna ( also peacock ) of some 40mm. All of this antenna ( painted in a similar fashion to a Drennan glo tip float complete with yellow band so I can see the dips ) sits above the water.
The considerable bulk shot was placed 2/3rds down and no 8's below that, BUT with the bottom shot some 8" from the hook. I fished it just off bottom.

What happened was that a ring appeared around the float first of all. Then the antenna just started to slowly sink to the surface and then below it, giving plenty of time to strike. It only took a ' lift ' to connect with the fish, but sometimes I still missed the bl**dy bite and this I think because I was fishing shallow, so what I did next was to strike sideways ( more of a ' pull ' into the fish ) and this worked perfectly !
It didn't work ALL the time but the success rate was pretty good..........

IMHO what I think was happening was the fish were having a problem taking the float and bulk shot down so it was acting something like a ' bolt rig ' similar to that mentioned by others when using perch bobber type floats. The bites were slower simply because they were pulling against so much resistance giving the effect of a ' slower ' bite.

In a word, not too much different from the bites Binka was getting with his bobber floats......

Anyway, I ended up with lots of fish with few missed once I'd adopted the sideways strike, which also has the advantage of NOT wrapping itself around the rod top on the strike!!!

NOT for a minute am I saying this approach would work under all circumstances, BUT it worked with the giant hemp this week.......maybe not next week, though !

So, food for thought ; Is going ultra fine with miniscule floats always the best way to go with shy biting fish ? If they have substantial weight to pull against, will it give a more positive bite - sometimes ??

Answers on a postcard.............................

A good question.

Last week on a windy day I fished using a waggler 3bb crystal with the rod tip low and a sweep of the rod to my right everytime the float lifted or sank. I hooked the majority of bites.

This week same swim no wind.
I fished my prefered method with the same float but top and bottom.
Same amount of bites but so many missed. It took some time to realise that whereas I hadn't worried about the trees behind and above my head before on the waggler, I did now and instead if a normal strike upwards fishing top and bottom close in I was striking sideways and this meant no immediate direct contact with the fish. Schoolboy error.

I love the crystal antenna floats for close in fishing. I'll sometimes dot the tip just under the water and hit lifts or happily fish them overshotted with an inch or so distance from the hook.

Fishing stillwater is a different ballgame altogether - it's all about timing of the strike - or is it? How come pellet/waggler techniques - fishing up in the water - are so successful - particularly using the mushroom-topped floats? The bolt-float effect is blamed - causing the fish to hook themselves! No need to strike! - Just reel -em in!

If you're fed-up of trying to time the strike of fiddly little up/down...up...down...u.p... bites - give up and try p-w up in the water! mg:

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Sorry Greenie I totally disagree with this statement mate, maybe I'm being a little touchy but it sounds to me like you are knocking the skill of pellet waggler fishing? I personally don't strike when fishing high up in the water on any waggler, I just wind into the fish it's nothing to do with a mushroom float, in fact I stay clear of the big pellet wagglers von some venues.

I personally don't think there is one answer to this, a lot is down to how the fish are feeding on the given day. Lets take Crucian fishing I gave had great days on them and the floats never gone under just lifed a cm or so, the rig was pole fished about 4 inch over depth with a tell tale shot 5 in away from the hook, others fished about 2 in off bottom and every one slides away.

The thing that's important to me is to straighten the line between the rod/pole tip as quickly as possible, I like to see the float move in a direction for sliverfish to give me a idea which way the fish is swimming and strike the oppersite way. For King carp in commies don't strike a lot of the time,for F1's depends on the day mostly they give horrible quick dinky bites.

In rivers on the stick it's always low and steady sweep level with the water, sometimes I'll strike at indications, I can't really put it into words what I look for - sorry. Anything the flow is not doing is a fish basically. Wagglers on rivers it's pretty much always directly up but again can depend on the wind.

It's a big old subject and theres no right or wrong answers

bracket said:

One method I found very successful on the river, when using the tip, was to fish to a bow in the line. This was achieved by tightening up to a the feeder that just held the deck, then paying out anything up to two yards of line, dependent on the strength of the current. The result was that the current took up the slack line and put a nice bend in the tip. Bites were nearly always drop backs, and unmissable. It worked an absolute dream for skimmers on the Trent in my match fishing days. Pete.

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I would do this freelining a big lump of cheese on the H Avon Pete, lob it in, wait till it settled on some weed or something and make a bow in the line. As you say the current would take up the slack and/or the wind. Just watch the bow in the line was easier than watching the tip and either it would straighten or drop back. I found with a big lump of cheese and possibly a big chub or barbel it payed to give them some more slack and wait a minute instead of striking straight away. Then just a good solid sweep of the rod.

---------- Post added at 07:11 ---------- Previous post was at 07:01 ----------

Here's a theme on the bob float, told to me by an Italian if I remember correctly.
He said he made his floats with a stem and a disc about 1/8 thick and 1/2 to 1 inch in diameter. He would set the float so the disc just sat above the water. As a fish hit the bait the disc would hit the water and cause ripples in the water so he knew he had a bite. Seeing the ripples caused was easier than watching the float for movement he reckoned.
Never seen a float like that myself but thinking about it, I guess it would be good for detecting small bites on a calm pond. What do ya reckon?

Talking of Italians, here's a joke, why not-The Lords and Ladies of an estate held a pheasant shoot one day and they invited an Italian guest along. There is a rule that you do not shoot a running bird on the ground, considered ungentlemanly, not the English way old chap. When the shoot started a bird run out on the ground in front of the Italian guest; he immediately took aim. One of the Lords cried out, "you don't shoot a running bird Sir", the Italian replied, "I am not, I am waiting for the b***ard to stop"..I think that's a true story.

And talking of shoots, my sister was invited on one once, she kept the cartridges in her pocket with her lipstick, she was caught trying to load her lipstick into the gun. that is a true story, dozy mare.

Sorry Binka- way way off topic, might make you smile though after breaking your chair while your eating your cornflakes..