hi,can someone explain the back lead set up for fishing rivers.
Cheers

It's much the same as for fishing in lakes. you cast out, settle the line then attach a backlead, dropping it a short way out. I now use back leads a lot of the time on the Medway, as even close in, it prevents boat wash from lifting the lead off the river bed.

What I do, is drop the backlead in the margins, then instead of pointing the rod skywards to look for a bite on the quivertip, I point it down and about 90 degrees to where the back lead is resting. It's a bit awkward, but you get used to it. It's well worth it when boat traffic increases, also if the wind picks up, causing surface drift, which will quite happilly drag a lead off the bottom, just when you don't need it.
It also works well at this time of year, when leaves are starting to drift down the river (depressing!!!)

Also, I mentioned in a post a while ago, that I was getting a lot of big knocks on the tip, which I thought were fish, but were in fact BATS hitting the line! This happens a lot in the summer, especially when there is a big mossie hatch. Backleading and pointing the rod downwards, has cured the problem.