swollen small local river..

[oneillbox]

a small river near to my home is very swollen at the moment, with various tributaries entering copious amounts of water to lift the depth and width of this river to perhaps 3 times its normal.

 

what effect does the colouration of the water have on the fishing potential. today i fished just 5 yards upstream of a tributary that entered chocolate coloured water into the river, where i was fishing was almost a deep blue/green colouration, but slightly downstream was the chocolate inwash which had coloured all of the river downstream of that point with the brown thick colouring. i caught some fish where i was fishing and had a few bites that i missed, but i did not let the float enter the chocolate water.... was i right in doing this?

 

the fish i caught were either dace or small chub. how do i tell the difference, as they are a fish i dont catch often i was not sure what they were, they only went up to about 4oz (the ones that i caught did anyway).

 

i was using single or double maggot on a size 18. what other baits would have given me a better advantage, depending on what the fish were of course.

 

i presume i was fishing about 3/4 depth, was this the right thing to do?

 

sorry about all of the questions, cheers in anticipation of some solid advice.

[Newt]

I do mostly pred angling so can't speak for the species you were catching but a pred will treat the line of clear -> cloudy water as any other edge and as an aide in ambushing smaller fish.

 

You say you did not let your float get into the cloudy water. While you might well not have caught there, why not give it a try?

 

Are there any obstructions (bank cuts, logs, rocks, whatever) to offer fish some relief from the current?

[oneillbox]

I do mostly pred angling so can't speak for the species you were catching but a pred will treat the line of clear -> cloudy water as any other edge and as an aide in ambushing smaller fish.

 

You say you did not let your float get into the cloudy water. While you might well not have caught there, why not give it a try?

 

Are there any obstructions (bank cuts, logs, rocks, whatever) to offer fish some relief from the current?

 

not too many obstructions, the river in its swollen state is only about 7 metres across.

 

come on guys, i need more advice on the deep blue/chocolate water factor !!

[Peter M]

If the river has barbel then you may well try for them, or try a sheltered back channel as the other fish(roach perch chub etc) often move into them when the river is flooding. link ledgerd worms are a good bet.

by the way chub have convex anal fins and the dace has a concave anal fin.

[Anderoo]

a small river near to my home is very swollen at the moment, with various tributaries entering copious amounts of water to lift the depth and width of this river to perhaps 3 times its normal.

 

what effect does the colouration of the water have on the fishing potential. today i fished just 5 yards upstream of a tributary that entered chocolate coloured water into the river, where i was fishing was almost a deep blue/green colouration, but slightly downstream was the chocolate inwash which had coloured all of the river downstream of that point with the brown thick colouring. i caught some fish where i was fishing and had a few bites that i missed, but i did not let the float enter the chocolate water.... was i right in doing this?

 

the fish i caught were either dace or small chub. how do i tell the difference, as they are a fish i dont catch often i was not sure what they were, they only went up to about 4oz (the ones that i caught did anyway).

 

i was using single or double maggot on a size 18. what other baits would have given me a better advantage, depending on what the fish were of course.

 

i presume i was fishing about 3/4 depth, was this the right thing to do?

 

sorry about all of the questions, cheers in anticipation of some solid advice.

 

On a cold swollen river I'd generally expect to quivertip rather than trot (except when I've got a lovely new pin to try out!), or if I was trotting I'd fish overdepth and hold back hard, rather than fishing 3/4 depth. I'd also look for either slack water near snags with a decent depth, or slower steady water with a decent depth, ideally with some cover e.g. a reedbed. For baits, if you can expect chub, in coloured water use something like cheesepaste or luncheon meat with some bait-droppered hemp and freebies on stout tackle. In clear water I'd stick to smaller baits like maggot or flake on lighter gear. This will pick up nearly any species.

 

The swim you describe sounds interesting! If the water flowing in from the tributarty was warmer after mild rain and was washing in nice titbits like worms, etc. then it would be worth fishing downstream of it, as long as you could find a spot with a comfortable flow and depth. If it's not washing food down and is cold (e.g. melted snow, cold rain) I'd avoid it and fish upstream as you did. The only way to really know though is to have a cast and see what happens!

 

There were clearly fish in your swim so you got that right by the sounds of it. I expect if you were legering you might have picked up one or two better fish. What I would do in this situation is take very little gear (tip rod, bag, net, chair, rod rest), bait up obvious 'chubby' swims with a bait dropper (with some hemp and luncheon meat, or hemp and maggots if it's clear, or mashed bread) and try each swim in turn, giving it 30 minutes. That way you're likely to drop onto some chub at some point.

 

Btw, chub have much bigger mouths than dace (MUCH bigger!) and usually have a black 'edge' to their fins. Possibly not at a few ouces though.

 

You might have guessed by now(!) but in conditions like these I'd always target the chub. They can nearly always be tempted and by moving around you'll have an interesting and varied day, and the size of fish you can expect is considerably bigger than fishing one swim with maggots.

 

(But there are always exceptions...!)

 

Good luck