A "swim"

[Redbaron]

i have read alot of posts and maybe this is a very stupid question to ask but when people talk about a swim is this a natural accurance of fish feeding or is it something created by the angler when using things like ground bait ect. I only ask coz where i fish in my local cannal i can never seen anything past a few inchs into the water. I have only started using ground bait this weekend to little effect but then again i only fished for a few hours.

 

many thanks in advance for answering a newbies question.

[Rusty]

‘Swim’ is a generic term for having some sort of access to the water. It doesn’t have to be somewhere teeming with fish or somewhere easy to get to (I know loads of swims devoid of fish). The extremes are constructed swims on commercials to heavily overgrown swims on un-fished rivers.

 

If you can get there and get a bait in the water you are fishing a swim.

Edited July 5, 2009 by Rusty

[Andy Macfarlane]

To me a swim is a likely looking fishing spot, be it a bay, a white run on a river, and inlet, and outlet, a shelf...whatever. It's wherever you choose to apply yourself that day. That is your swim.

 

IE: I fancy this swim, even if it hasn't been used by other anglers. If it looks productive, that's your swim.

[Elton]

I'd describe a swim as an area that you're fishing, pretty much like Andy describes. Basically, if you pitch up at a spot on a river, the bit in front of you is a swim.

 

If the fishing spots are pre-determined and numbered, typically for match fishing, then it becomes a peg.

[DavyR]

Does anyone still use the term "pitch" as in Fred J Taylor's "Favourite Swims and Stillwater Pitches"? Come to think of it, was that term ever widely used (other than by FJT)?

[Newt]

While we are on the terminology -

 

A venue = the lake/pond but how about for a river? Surely it can't be as non-specific as the entire length so would it be some sort of defined section?

[Anderoo]

Don't us anglers make even the simplest things complicated

 

A swim is the place on the bank you are fishing from. Unless you're in a match and fishing from a purposely constructed fishing spot, in which case you're in a peg. However, on a river where you have to fight through the netles to get to the water, that's a spot. But if you're a floppy hatted traditionalist and are possibly fishing overnight under a tarpaulin, it's a pitch.

 

Easy

[Vagabond]

Does anyone still use the term "pitch" as in Fred J Taylor's "Favourite Swims and Stillwater Pitches"? Come to think of it, was that term ever widely used (other than by FJT)?

 

In its early years, AT ran a weekly piece "Dick Walker's Pitch" before FJT got involved with writing.

There is an area at Redmire known as "Pitchford's Pitch" (that refers to BB as I am sure you will know)

 

As Anderoo implies, the word probably derives from pitching a tent by your "swim", this turning it into a "pitch", and paradoxically, at the same time constraining (pegging down) yourself to that one bit of water, so it also becomes a "peg"

 

...and of course if you run out of Jaffa Cakes, then you are in a "spot"

Edited July 6, 2009 by Vagabond

[gozzer]

Does anyone still use the term "pitch" as in Fred J Taylor's "Favourite Swims and Stillwater Pitches"? Come to think of it, was that term ever widely used (other than by FJT)?

 

I think Fred J had it about right.

He seemed to prefer to call it a 'swim' on moving water, and a 'pitch' on a still water.

'Swim' giving the impression of movement, and 'pitch' one of a static area of water.

Trotting a swim was often referred to as 'swimming the stream'.

 

It's often locally called a 'hole' as well, where a 'swim' is identified by a prominent feature or particular fish, such as 'the stump hole', 'the barbel hole' and even 'the tin can hole', (I know of a few 'tin can holes' on various Yorkshire rivers, but never seen a tin can in any of them ).

 

John.

[Vagabond]

What about a "reach"

 

When I fish the "Cogger's Mill Reach" it seems to imply I have the stream to myself.

 

Just as it should be really