Night fishing species

There's always going to be the favourites for a spot of night fishing such as carp and big bream.

Perch are a fish that I don't hear of many targeting during darkness whilst zander are another favourite after dark species.

Maybe you've done well with some big roach, tench or chub after sunset?

What species have you particularly targeted at night and did it prove successful for you?

Zander and yes. Barbel and sometimes. I'm not a big "after darker" other than for those two and never do all nighters. If I were to be restricted to daylight only for me zeds then I'd have had about 3 in the last 2 years. At BH certainly they have become almost exclusively dusk and after dark feeders unless the water is very coloured and the barometer very low ie after a big SW blow. In those conditions they will feed all day long and I'd expect multiple catches.

I was a big believer in up to and into dark roach fishing but thinking back I'm not convinced my results actually backed that up. Nice to do though.

S-Kippy said:

Zander and yes. Barbel and sometimes. I'm not a big "after darker" other than for those two and never do all nighters. If I were to be restricted to daylight only for me zeds then I'd have had about 3 in the last 2 years. At BH certainly they have become almost exclusively dusk and after dark feeders unless the water is very coloured and the barometer very low ie after a big SW blow. In those conditions they will feed all day long and I'd expect multiple catches.

I was a big believer in up to and into dark roach fishing but thinking back I'm not convinced my results actually backed that up. Nice to do though.

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As soon as I saw you'd replied Skip, I instantly thought...

Sea Trite!

I couldn't possibly answer that Binka I'm a happily married man:wh

Over the years I've done well over a 1000 nights fishing for carp, now I hardly do any night fishing at all. Had lots of carp, tench, a few catfish, bream and eels, I went through a phase of being particularly good at catching tufties in the middle of the night!

I regularly fish after dark now for roach but don't bivvy up for them.

I think that next year I might get back into doing more nights again.

I used to target big roach at night, often the best time.
We could roll up on a cold bright sunny day in winter that had been white over with frost, set up before it went dark after other anglers had been sat there all day without a bite and just going or gone dark could have the betalights in the buttrings and the old mitchell 300s churning with a big roach.
Same with big chub, often on a notts pit . Same methods but with a small triangle of mackeral on a size eight hook, cum dark and the betalights would be jumping from three feet below the rod into the butt ring, super exciting stuff.

binka said:

As soon as I saw you'd replied Skip, I instantly thought...

Sea Trite!

Click to expand...

Forgot about those bloody things. That's exclusively pitch black darkness work if you want to catch them properly ie on a fly and not on a worm. Hardest fishing I've ever experienced in terms of the the concentration levels required . A typical summer session of around 3 hours is utterly exhausting......both physically and especially mentally. Fantastically exciting when out of nowhere something hits your fly hard and tears off like a lunatic.

Haven't done any this year because the Big Fellers not fit and it's not something I particularly want to do on me own. Wouldnt feel right without me old mate there .

Eels, Carp, Tench, Zander, Barbel,Bream, Catfish and Chub.

Never done any good with Perch at night.

Bob

Notice Skippy didn't say about his Eel fishing, mind you, he catches them at all times of the day

Bream, Barbel, Roach, Chub, Tench and Carp.

Barbel and Roach would be into dark up until around midnight.

The others are all night sessions, but mostly over two or three days.

Can't say that the Roach fishing was that great the later it got, the bites seemed to drop off the later it got. As we do, we always stayed late, just in case of that late late bite.

binka said:

As soon as I saw you'd replied Skip, I instantly thought...

Sea Trite!

Click to expand...

Weird, I thought eels! Or bream, at a push.

Slightly more seriously, I consider some species more suited to genuine night fishing, not just a few hours after dusk, than others. Leaving aside predators including pike, zander, eels and cats, that I rarely fish for, carp, bream, tench, barbel and roach would all be on my own night fishing agenda.

I used to regularly fish all nighters after barbel on the Kennet nearly every week during the 70s, and during some of the warmer nights the river often seemed to come alive with them grunting upside down under the fronds of streamer weed feeding on insects and snails eggs etc; and we always caught quite a few during the night; and in the mornings we often used to pack up and walk the bank talking to some of the anglers who had just turned up, and there were some who had been fishing the Kennet for years, and had only ever fished there during the daylight hours; and who had hardly if ever caught any barbel at all.

In the streams that I fish today however; the Barbel feed well during the day as well as at night but I often need to use much lighter gear during daylight hours than at night; especially when the water is low and clear.
Regardless of where I have fished for them at night there nearly always seemed to be a really slow period between around 12:30pm up to around 4:30am when we could sneak a couple of hours shuteye Lol.

In the 80s I used to fish through the nights after Carp in the Colne valley and a couple of the Kent lakes and almost everyone knows that Carp usually feed avidly all through the nights.

In the 90s we used to fish through the nights after big Crucians, Bream and Tench; but although there were the occasional nights when the Tench fed right through the night that was not all that common and the Tench were conspicuous by their absence most nights from an hour or so after dark up until the early hours of the mornings.

NB: I stopped fishing right through the night several years ago and I now usually pack up around an hour or two after dark and that's my lot as I'm not getting any younger now. LOL.

Keith

Yeah, for all the night fishing I did, there was precious little action between the first hour of darkness and the break of dawn. There were a very few exceptions - most notably a roach water I was guesting at which was less than two feet deep and fairly clear. I would guess that the black menace have cleaned it out by now, since it isn't an angling venue and is only a few miles from the coast.

Premier league night species : Carp, Eels, Zander, Wels
1st divison : Bream, Barbel, Tench; Chub
2nd divison : Roach, Pike Rudd
Non league : Perch, Dace

But of course fish can have their own ideas & mess up the rule book! ...

Some years ago my best spell of Pike fishing was on a small water and all the better fish came after dark….and I do mean full darkness…1am sort of thing. You could not get a touch during the day but once night fell they would feed and I landed some really good ones in the dead of night including a brace at the same time on one occasion.

The water in question was very shallow, maybe 3 and a half feet at its deepest and full of small carp. I caught all the pike on tiny livebaits such as a pair of 2oz Roach one on each treble of a snap tackle and the Pike took them. Some where 20lb + fish and I am convinced they would not have bothered taking such small baits in daylight but after dark they did not realize it was 2 baits & mistook the disturbance they caused for 1 big one….but of course I will never know for sure.

Night fishing is all about chub for me. They seem to spread out to the easier to catch middle of the river, from their daytime haunts, and take baits at will (steak and lamprey prove particularly effective for me at night).


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