A short session on the stick float

TO FOLLOW THE BLOG ON FACEBOOK PLEASE CLICK HERE

Tackle choice

Rod

Vintage Daiwa harrier s 13ft match rod.

These old match rods are excellent for fishing the stick float and waggler on rivers having a lot of flexibility in the tip of the rod to absorbe the lunges of bigger fish when using light lines and avoid hook pulls on smaller fish.

Reel

Vintage Shakespeare matchwinner closed face reel.

An excellent choice for River fishing allowing line to be taken freely off the spool as the float trots down exploring the swim with the advantage of the enclosed face stopped any wind present from causing tangled around the spool.

Mainline

3lb monofilament.

A good all-round choice for this style of fishing all year round with the option to drop down to 2.6lb in winter if fishing becomes harder.

Hooklenght

2.5lb flurocarbon.

This is about the heaviest hooklenght material I'd use for trotting on a river for smaller species dropping down as low as 1.6lb in the colder months.

Float

5 no.4 shouldered stick float

Hook

Kamasan b611 in a size 16

An excellent hook with a slightly thicker wire than the B511 which I would use if targeting smaller species or if the fishing was really difficult.

Bait

The bait for the day was simply a pint of maggots purchased from the local tackle shop. 

The session

As always I started the session by having a rough plumb of swim in front of me. I chose to fish at around three rod lengths out and found that it was about 7ft deep. The lack of flow combined with a reasonable depth meant that I could get away with a nice light stick float of 5 no.4's. The float was fished shirt button style to produce a delicate presentation but a presentation that had enough stability to allow me to cast the distance and control the float when trotting a long way down the peg.

The start of the session saw me snag up a few times and lose three hooklenghts in quick succession on some kind of underwater obstruction. I moved a little bit further out where I had a clear trot through and continued to fish.

After re-plumbing I starting fishing again feeding ten to fifteen maggots every cast. I was getting quick dips on the float from the first trot down. It wasn't long before those dips developed into proper bites which produced my first few fish of the session which where very small small dace. With the bites coming on the drop I wanted to make the hookbait fall a little bit faster through the bottom third of the water column to get it through the small dace and down near the bottom. This was where I suspected the bigger fish would be so I decided to swap my number eight dropper shot for a number six whilst also adding a little depth to the rig to drag a small amount of line on the bottom.

The changes proved to be for the better as on the very next trot down the float dipped and disappeared out of sight and I struck into what I could tell was a much better fish. This turned out to be a decent perch putting up a great fight on the light gear.

The following hour or so saw me catch a few more of decent perch aswell as a number of good quality roach with a few of those small dace mixed in that where still managing to grab the bait every now and again as it was falling through the water.

As with most sessions on the river the bites at the beginning of the session came from a good 20 yards or more down the peg but as the loose feed went in the fish moved upstream and towards the end of the session I was only having to run the float down the swim about 10 yards or so before recieving bites.

To see the rig used in more depth please click here

See below: The session was only a couple of hours at the moment and produced this lovely mixed bag of fish.