First Class Fishing

FIRST CLASS FISHING

‘First Class Fishing’, a series of classes for beginners and improvers conducted by Dave Cooper, an all-round experienced angler with a string of good fish and good catches to his credit. The classes are aimed at those who have recently discovered the joys of fishing and need guidance on using tackle correctly and wish to improve their basic skills. Dave will cover a specific topic at a time in this bi-weekly column. The first section will be really basic with subsequent ones building on the skills covered previously. His aim is to explain things as simply and concisely as possible and will assume that the reader knows absolutely nothing about the subject.

FLOAT FISHING

Part Four – Stillwater Waggler Fishing continued – Building on the basics

In part three we looked at how to loose feed to attract and hold fish in your swim, how to identify bites, how to strike, how to play fish and some additional tips on how to overcome some of the more common problems encountered when stillwater waggler fishing.

This time I will expand on the basics, showing you how and when to use different designs and sizes of waggler floats, some different shotting patterns for various situations including, ‘on the drop’, ‘beat the small fish’, ‘off the bottom drift beater’, ‘the lift method’, and ‘the slider’.

When to use which waggler

In part two of Float Fishing I showed you the four basic styles of waggler;

• The standard or thick tip straight waggler
• The insert tip straight waggler
• The standard or thick tip bodied waggler
• The insert tip bodied waggler

In this part I will explain more fully the uses of these floats and when you should use them on a stillwater. The tackle set-ups I have shown so far are basic rigs that will get you fishing competently and catching fish. Now, as your skill and confidence grow, we can start looking at refining your skills and adding the touches and understanding to your tackle set up that can turn a good days fishing into a great one.

So, these waggler patterns, which ones do we use and when?

Standard straight waggler
Well, we can almost discard this first option, the standard or ‘thick tip’ straight waggler, immediately. These are primarily for use on rivers and I will be covering them in a future First Class Fishing. I say almost, because there is one waggler set up, the ‘lift method’ that it can be used for and I will cover this further on.

Insert straight waggler
The insert tip straight waggler is a useful float to have in your collection for when fish are taking ‘on the drop’. I will go in to detail later on how to fish ‘on the drop’, but the principle of the rig is to be able to identify when a fish has intercepted your bait as it is still falling through the water. In order to do this you need as sensitive a float as you can use that will show the smallest movement of any of the dropper shot. By using a slim straight waggler you minimise the overall surface area of the float and hence the overall water resistance. The insert tip when it comes into play as the shot settle is again very sensitive and will show the smallest of bait movements clearly. Both of these principles give you the best chance to see an ‘on the drop’ bite as early as possible. Another reason for using a straight waggler would be when fishing in shallow water, when the minimum of disturbance is required as the float lands on the water. A straight waggler, cast correctly, causes less disturbance than a bodied version.

Standard bodied waggler
The standard or thick tip bodied waggler we have used in our basic set up. If I was only going to have one pattern of stillwater waggler in my box it would be this one as it will perform competently, but not always perfectly, in all situations you may encounter. The bodied float is the most popular stillwater pattern for presenting a bait on the bottom, as it casts easily, and is stable when there is a breeze on the water. The thick tip version should be the first choice if there is a significant ripple on the water or if you are fishing at distance, either of which can make an insert tip difficult to see. If you have trouble seeing an insert tip you may as well change to the thicker tipped float as any advantages you gain in sensitivity are lost anyway by not immediately spotting the bite when it occurs.

Bodied insert waggler
Ideally for presenting a bait on the bottom you want to use the bodied insert waggler. This pattern gives you the casting and stability properties of the body with the sensitivity and minimal water resistance of the insert tip. A biting fish will feel less drag from the float as it takes the bait and the insert tip will show the movement a fraction earlier as it easier to move and pull under. Both of these properties minimise the chance of a fish ejecting the bait before you can strike. This pattern is, by and large, the one you will use most on a stillwater.

Choosing the right size waggler

We have learned that a waggler comes in only four basic patterns, but why is there a myriad of sizes available? Which size is used when? Well, the answer is generally governed by answering another simple question, “how far do I need to cast?”

Usually the size of the float to be used is simply governed by how far you need to cast it. From a casting point of view, the closer in you are fishing, the smaller the float you can get away with, the further out you need to fish, the heavier the float will need to be in order to reach the required distance. You also need to consider the strength and direction of the breeze that is blowing, as casting into a headwind will reduce by several yards the distance that you can cast the same float with the wind coming from behind you. My overall guidance would be use a float that errs slightly on the heavy side, perhaps by a BB shot or so. Remember that in most instances you want to be able to cast a few feet beyond your fishing area so you can draw it back and sink the line. You need to be able to accomplish this with ease with a smooth cast, rather than trying to lash the float out with a lot of effort. An underweight float usually leads to loss of accuracy, wasted effort, reduced actual fishing time, unnecessary disturbance and ultimately will reduce your enjoyment.

Over time you can build up a collection of floats that vary from those that carry a couple of BB shot that you can use under your rod tip, up to floats carrying multiple SSG’s that you can punch out a fair distance. Try a few practice sessions with floats of varying weights to see how far you can cast each one. Armed with this knowledge you will be able to judge which float to choose for a particular session.

More advanced methods and rigs

On the drop
In some circumstances, especially when you are loose feeding maggots or small pellets in warm weather, the fish become so active and intent on feeding, they start to anticipate the free offerings being introduced and intercept the feed before it hits the bottom. You will hear this referred to as ‘feeding up in the water’. To catch efficiently in this scenario you have to adapt your float rig to fish ‘on the drop’.

The principle of fishing ‘on the drop’ is to get your hook bait falling as naturally as possible amongst a selection of free offerings and for this to occur you need the minimum of weight on the line dragging the bait towards the bottom. However, unless you are fishing at less than 18 inches deep, you do need some dropper shot to transmit the indication of a bite to the float.

The best float to use is a straight waggler with a long, thin insert tip. Load the majority of the shot around the base of the float so that you only need between one and three very small dropper shot down the line to dot down the insert tip. For this rig I like to use tiny no.10 shot as droppers. You need to play around a bit to find out at what depth the fish are feeding best and shot accordingly. As a rule of thumb I would use a no.10 shot for every two feet of depth.

The purpose of the dropper shot are two fold. Firstly to transmit the bite to the float, and secondly as an indicator on the where the hook bait is in its fall through the water. As each shot reaches its depth it will take the insert tip of the float further down in the water. Providing you don’t get a bite, the time taken to settle will remain constant on each cast enabling you to ‘count down’ the shot on the float tip. If the tip fails to settle to a shot as expected it means a fish has intercepted the bait on the way down, so strike. To fish this rig effectively you need to have the line between float and hook straight and the bait falling with free offerings. The way I achieve this is to overcast my fishing spot, feed the loose offerings and then quickly draw the float back to the feed area. Strike at any ‘strange’ float movements.

Beat the small fish set up
This is almost the opposite of the ‘on the drop’ rig, in that this time you are trying to avoid fish taking your bait on the drop. Sometimes while targeting bottom feeding fish like tench or bream, you may get plagued by small roach or rudd intercepting your bait on the way down to the bottom which prevents your target species from having any chance of picking up your bait. To combat this you need to get the bait down to the bottom much more quickly to give the better fish feeding there a chance to find your bait.

To do this, reduce the bulk shot immediately below the float by about a no.6 or No. 4 and add this shot at about two feet from the hook. Arrange the dropper shot below this. The additional weight down the line will take the hook bait close to the bottom quickly, hopefully avoiding the attentions of the ‘nuisance’ small fish. Take care when casting though, making sure you ‘feather’ the cast, as this shotting pattern is more prone to tangles.

Off the bottom drift beater
The strength of the wind has another impact on the size choice of a waggler. A persistent wind will cause the float to drift. I explained in part 3 how to combat this by having some shot on the bottom, but in some circumstances you may find it beneficial to fish with the bait only just touching bottom, or indeed an inch or two off the bottom. You may want to do this in order to maintain the rigs sensitivity to shy biting fish or when fishing over very soft silt bottoms that may mask your bait.

These big wagglers make good wind-beaters

How then do you stop the float from drifting in a breeze or surface tow if you have no shot on the bottom to anchor it? Well, by choosing a much longer bodied waggler than you would normally use, a float of over a foot or more in length is not too short, and altering the shotting pattern, you can dramatically cut down the drift rate, if not eliminate it completely. If possible choose a float with an insert tip or as thin a top as you can get away with to minimise wind resistance. The shotting pattern is altered by going against my golden rule of bunching the bulk shot under the float. In this instance you need to place the bulk shot at about two thirds to three quarters depth down the line, with a couple of dropper shot between this and the hook. This set up should dramatically cut down the amount the float is pulled by wind or tow as the line between rod tip and float is held well below the surface by the long float and the lower set bulk shot provides much more of an anchor effect than when set immediately below the float. The downside of this rig is you can’t cast it a tremendous distance, and care has to be taken when casting to avoid tangles, but in certain situations it can prove deadly.

The lift method
This has got to be one of the all time favourite float fishing methods. It is such a visually exciting rig to fish! This rig is designed for close-in tactics when trying to catch bottom feeding fish like tench, bream and crucian carp. As its name suggests bites are usually indicated by the float lifting up in the water rather than being pulled under and it works like this.

Firstly the float. As I said at the beginning of the article you use a standard straight peacock waggler for this method. The thick tip is important here as for this rig you are looking for buoyancy in the tip, not sensitivity. Make sure the float is made of peacock quill as this is the most buoyant float material. The float should be small, around four to six inches long, and attached to the line by a half inch long piece of silicon tubing rather than locking it on with shot.

The shot should be a single large weight, like an SSG, pinched on about four inches above the hook. The buoyancy of the float should ideally just support the weight of the shot.

The rig is then set over-depth by about a 12 inches and cast out. The float will obviously lie flat on the surface initially as it’s set over-depth and the large shot is on the bottom, so set your rod in a rod rest with the rod tip just touching the water and then gently wind in until the line tightens and the float cocks. Carefully wind in until the float is set with just its tip breaking the surface.

Depending on how a fish takes your bait, the float will do one of two things. It will either slide straight under as a fish picks up your bait and moves away with it quite quickly, usually resulting in your rod tip being pulled round too, or you will get the classic lift bite. The lift bite occurs when the taking fish lifts the shot off the bottom, causing the float to rise up in the water. If it lifts it far enough the float will actually lie flat on the surface. It will then slide away across the waters surface as the fish moves slowly off. At this point strike and hang on.

This method is a classic early season tench method and is very visual and exciting to fish. However, it is limited for casting distance and doesn’t work too well in windy conditions or where there is significant surface drift. But on a calm summer morning when feeding tench are fizzing up clouds of bubbles, it is superb.

The slider
How do you float fish in water that is deeper than the length of your rod? For example, you want to float fish with the bait on or near the bottom, but the water is 20 feet deep and your rod is only 13 feet long. You can’t fish a fixed waggler because you won’t be able to cast or land fish. What you need in this situation is the slider.

The slider is a big, bodied, loaded waggler, with a long stem and usually with an insert tip, that takes a lot of weight to cock it. What do I mean by loaded? This is when the float has weight built in to its base so you don’t have to attach as much shot to the line, making it partly ‘self cocking’. The loading on the float should submerge the body part of the float and part of the stem, leaving the remaining stem part requiring an additional 2 to 4 AAA shot to set it correctly in the water. The slider float will have either a small eye fixed on the base, or sometimes a small swivel.

The principle of the slider is to let the float run free on the line with the shot bulked towards the hook. When you cast out, the bulk shot pull the line through the eye of the float, enabling the float to slide until it reaches the correct depth. How is the correct depth set? This is achieved by tying a short piece of line to the mainline using a ‘stop knot’. The stop knot will run freely on and off the reel and through the rod rings, but it will not pass through the small eye of the float, stopping the float from sliding any further. By adjusting the position of the stop knot on the mainline you can stop the float at the depth you want to fish at.

The slider seems an intimidating and complicated rig to fish, but if you get the mechanics of the rig right it is actually relatively simple and very effective. The first rule is to make sure that the loading weight on the float is greater than the weight of the bulk shot down the line. This ensures that the float provides the dominant casting weight and stops the float from sliding up the line in mid air, which in turn will reduce the casting distance and greatly increase the chance of a tangle occurring. The second rule is to get the shotting pattern below the float right. Let’s do this with an example.

Firstly, you don’t want your slider float sitting right on top of your bulk shot. You need to add a ‘stopper’ shot for the float to rest on prior to casting. This should be a no.4 shot and set at approximately 8ft above the hook. This places the float at a comfortable position for casting. Next, add the bulk shot. This should be a bulk of 2 or 3AAA and maybe a BB, depending on the required float loading, and is positioned just below the half distance point between the rest shot and the hook, say about 3 feet above the hook. Lastly put a BB dropper shot just below the half distance between the bulk shot and the hook, say around 14 inches above the hook. A BB sounds large for a dropper shot, but is correct for this set up.

To cast the slider rig you need to hold the line with your free hand just above the hook and with the rod pointing straight out in front of you. Bring the rod round to the side until it is pointing parallel with the bank, than smoothly bring the rod back round to the front, releasing the line from your free hand as you do so. If your timing is correct the rig will fly out accurately to your intended fishing area without tangling. Don’t close the bale-arm straight away, allow the line to continue peeling off the reel until the float has come to rest against the stop knot. Then close the bail arm, tighten up to the float and you are fishing.

Watch the float closely as bites often occur as lift bites with this rig. Taking fish lift the bottom dropper shot causing the float to ride up. Otherwise the float will sail away. Despite the size and shotting appearing rather bulky and crude, this rig is actually quite sensitive and works really well, even for smaller fish like roach, often out-fishing an alternative leger set up.

Well, the first four parts of Float Fishing in this First Class Fishing series have just about covered stillwater waggler fishing from absolute beginner up to more advanced techniques and set ups. In part five I will be moving on to running water and will begin showing you how to use the waggler on a river. See you then.