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Juniors - Tips of the month - JULY

Juniors - Tips of the month - JUNE

The tips for the month series continues, but this time we have to say a special ‘Thank you’ to Mike Osborne for a great feature on swim selection and starting the new season. An added feature for this month only, is that we have divided the article up into two sections. Here’s the first part, and part two will appear near the end of the month.

Tips for June

New Season, New River and New Swims.

The new rivers season will soon be here and if you have done a little bit of ‘homework’ during the close season, you will probably have already chosen the river where you are going to start the season off. Let’s say that you have selected a river, either one you have fished before or even a new one you have access to, and you now want to choose a swim to fish.

If you have done a little ‘homework’ as mentioned, you probably have a good idea of likely looking swims and also what the swims look like in clear water conditions. The first thing to consider is safety. Can you access your chosen swim safely and also play and land a fish safely, either in your swim or very close up or downstream. Ideally you should also be able to return your catch quite close to your swim but not directly into the area you are putting your bait.

When you are selecting your swim and have made sure that the safety concerns are satisfied, you also have to be reasonably sure that there is a good chance of fish being either in the swim area or very close, so they can be drawn into your feeding area. This can depend on several things, the most important being, are fish visible in or close to the swim. If it’s not possible to confirm this, then you should select a swim by use of what is called ‘watercraft’. Watercraft is the term that describes how we view the swim, based on the knowledge of barbel behaviour, resting and feeding environments and how they use cover and current flow to comfortably live in the river.

It is generally accepted that barbel are primarily nocturnal feeders (they feed in darkness) and that they spend daylight hours in safe, secure areas of their habitat. On the other hand, it is also accepted that they can be induced to feed at almost any time of the day or night, provided that they feel secure and unafraid. So, for daytime fishing, you have to be extremely cautious in your approach to the swim, not to be visible against the skyline and to be very careful in movement of your feet, tackle and bags, so as to make the minimum amount of noise. This way, you should be able to tempt the barbel from their home and onto your feed and ultimately your baited hook.

Let’s say that your chosen swim is in an area of the river that has some bankside cover, in the form of bushes or small trees on your and the opposite bank, a steady main flow and patches of sand/gravel between reed or weed growth. This is a typical barbel swim on small rivers such as the Kennet, Teme, Dane, Dove, Swale and many more. There are similar swims on other larger rivers too, such as the middle Severn and upper Trent, Hampshire Avon and Dorset Stour, which some of you may know and recognise. You may also have added features in your chosen swim, such as up and downstream bends, visible snags such as fallen trees and weed rafts built up around trailing branches or embedded snags.

Your main aim, following a correct approach, should be to introduce some small feed items, by hand or with a dropper, to the visible clear sand/gravel area and observe any interest from the barbel. Should you not have a visible river bottom, then this would require a slightly different approach which we will discuss in another article along with the use of ‘watercraft’ to determine the feeding and fishing regime.

Just let’s return to the method of correct swim approach and think about the preparation required. I never, ever select a swim and move in without first making up my rod and landing net. I always carry out these tasks away from the swim, even away from the actual riverbank. All that you should need to do, once settled into your swim, is determine the weight required to hold your bait in position, attach your bait and present it where required.

Back to the actual fishing now and, hopefully you will have seen some activity around your free offerings, if not you can try the same tactic again because you first have to gain the trust of the barbel before they will leave their sanctuary. Provided that you have not made your presence too obvious to them, it is likely that they will feed on the free offerings, in time, and then you can introduce the baited hook.

Provided also that your selected fishery is not too crowded on your visit, you can adopt the same tactics on a couple of nearby swims, giving you the opportunity to have two or three areas to be able to stimulate feeding. If you are fishing with a friend, then you both can adopt this method and share the swims in turn, possibly increasing your chances of contacting willingly feeding fish. Having said that, you should always move between swims with the same degree of care and stealth as you did initially.

Good Fishing to All and take care out there.

In our last article, we looked at new swims on a new river where we could see what we were doing with our feed, on a clear river with the bed quite visible. Here, I would like to discuss the means that we can use to select a swim, likely to contain barbel or one which barbel may frequent, where we cannot see the bottom. I did mention the word ‘watercraft’ and explained that this was the means by which we read the river, to give us pointers to likely barbel holding or feeding spots, from our knowledge of barbel behaviour. This is of primary use when we cannot see the riverbed, so cannot see the fish there, either due to the clarity of the water or depth.

Ideally, what I’m going to describe should be carried out whilst doing your ‘homework’ in the close season, because should you chance upon your river when it’s impossible to see the riverbed, it is still fishable although you’ll lose some fishing time carrying out your search for the ideal swim.

Let us imagine our selected stretch has similar features as described last time and with definite changes of flow pattern where the river passes through up and downstream bends. On a fairly calm day without too much wind, you will be able to see the changes in surface current flow patterns and pace, which will be replicated below the surface at the riverbed. Careful study should reveal that, as the river flows into and out of a bend, the faster water will be around the outside curve of the bend and the slower water on the inside curve of the bend. Now, as this flow pattern may have been occurring for many thousands of years, it is reasonable to assume that the dynamics of the river has scoured a channel that will be deeper where the flow is greater and allowed sediments to build on the riverbed where the flow is less powerful.

Now, if we a lucky enough to have another bend in our river, a little way downstream, and which changes the flow pattern again, almost to the direction it entered from at the previous bend, we will be in a section that is between reverse action bends. By this I mean that the river flow is acted upon by two bends where the faster flow is transferred from one side of the river to the other. The best way to imagine this is to think of the river stretch as a giant letter ‘S’ but with a straight bit between the two curves. If you think of the upstream end as the top of the ‘S’, with the flow coming in from the right and your position is just inside the first curve, then you can see that the faster flow would be at the top left hand of the ‘S’ and the slower flow where you are positioned. The reverse happens at the bottom outlet of the ‘S’ and the faster water is on your bank.

Thinking back to what we said above, that the channel formed would be deeper where the flow is greater, it is also reasonable to assume that at the upstream end of this channel there is likely to be an area of ‘comfort’ directly below where the channel is at it’s deepest. By ‘comfort’, I mean an area of less forceful flow where barbel may find a suitable feeding area, where food items become deposited. It is possible that this area also coincides with a ‘drop-off’ in the riverbed, formed due to flood action over many, many years. Time spent with a rod and lead in such areas would soon reveal such drop-offs to you.

Such ‘drop-off’ areas are always worth searching out with a baited hook and some form of ground baiting or feeder baiting. This becomes a must for fishing when you encounter flood conditions, for the ‘drop-off’ area will become a real sanctuary for barbel and you will be surprised to find that it does not require very large amounts of lead to be able to present a bait in such areas.

The second area to merit your investigation is where the channel ends, at the limit of the scouring action from the momentum of the river. This area can be productive when the river is at normal level and flow, for again, this is where there will be a ‘comfort’ zone, where the food items will deposit and where the barbel will probably enter and leave the channel on their food searching activities. This will be where the channel gradually closes off, with a fairly gradual slope upwards from the bottom of the channel to the normal riverbed course. Searching this slope area with your baited hook will reveal the hot-spots for feeding fish.

Finally, there is one point I would like to make about a rising river, and that is it is a prime time for a certain type of swim. Remembering what we said about the faster and slower water and the positioning of theses flows at bends, the slower water will invariably be on the inside of a bend, where the river bank is acting as a brake on the flow. Now, you can use this to your advantage, when you observe a rising river, or you are aware that a rise is in the offing due to rain falling upstream somewhere. The barbel seem to sense such changes, even before they become apparent to us humans, and make for the slower flow regime, in anticipation of the flood that is coming. If you have selected this type of swim, in anticipation of the river coming up, then you are very likely to have a good catch of fish.

Enjoy your early season outings and please remember the best swim you can fish is the one with fish in, or very near to it, and the swim that you can get into and out of safely.

We’ll talk some more, about floodwater fishing, in the autumn, ‘tight-lines’ !!

Mike Osborne.

Juniors - Tips of the month - MARCH

Juniors - Tips of the month - MAY

Just Cause And Impediment

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My region does nothing for me! - Harry Green

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