Roach fishing?

[wunnus]

Fishing on the drop from a slim controller float works well if the fish are not used to it. It somehow allows you to get at the larger rudd.

[Nodin]

I was 30-th out of 50 at Moscow cup. Good result for me fishing with a 28- feet whip at high wind while other 49 used poles

[Peter Waller]

Nice one Nodin! How did the unweighted bait work?

[RUDD]

JonHedges:

Peter,

I fail to see how a ledger avoids small fish when a float rig doesn't (assuming both baits are fairly static on the bottom ?

Can you enlighten me as it might help me avoid the bits on my local river ?

Big roach tend to lay to the sides or below the smaller roach.

They are very cautious fish and only seem to take bigger baits that get through the smaller fish.

I have sat feeding a shoul in a shallow stream and watched them do this.

If a pike attacks the shoul they are in the best place to avoid capture as a pike will strike towards the centre as it has a better chance of getting a meal. As they are also near the bottom an accelerating pike will not turn downwards as it cant turn that quick and if it did it would probably bury its nose in the bottom!!!!!

[Nodin]

Peter Waller:

How did the unweighted bait work?

I am sorry for being so late with the answer to your question, Peter. The Moscow cup was followed by the 6-th Russian Internet Fishing Cup last Sunday, so I was busy with training (this time my result wasn't very good).

As for the unweighted hook tactics, it was hard to use it because of high wind, 5-feet depth and very speedy fishing. At internet Cup I tried to move the shot two feet away from the hook, but many times had the bloodworms sucked out with no notice of the bite.

But still I had some practice with this method before in course fishing and consider it worth using when fish is very "delicate" taking the bait.

You can see some pictures of competitioms in Moscow here (me at # 1168) and in the middle of page here web page

 

Best wishes,

[Ed Matysiak]

I would use an open end feeder with a bread crum groundbait. Fill the feeder with hemp and a few grains of corn. Fish a grain of sweetcron on a size 16 and a short hooklength. This caught my PB 1lb 8oz roach last summer.

[Dick Dastardly]

Ledgered bread flake for me.Not very high tech but I bet its caught more big Roach than any other method.

[John Ellison]

I'm with Hoppy on this one. Casters are THE NUMBER ONE must have. In my opinion, this is just the right time of year to catch the bigger ones.

Quality roach just love casters. Fish the bait static and bait up with a pale caster up the shank of the hook and a darker one on the point.

I have a distinct feeling that they find the pale one and eat the dark one. Do it the other way round and you will find that you will miss bites.

I have experienced this many times. If you just bait up with two dark casters, I'm convinced you have to wait longer for your bites, due to the lower light levels at which the bigger roach feed at. PB 2 lbs 6 1/2 ozs.

I've caught big roach in winter from the same swims that in summer I'd catch double figure nets of 2 oz fish from and never seen anything remotely bigger. Lay on in winter and bingo.

good luck.

 

findthe pale one and prefer to eat

[Dick Dastardly]

Thats an interesting tip about the light and dark casters John.Must try it next time I am using them.