Making Noise Work For You

Another angler who used to fish with a good pal of mine many years ago packed up in disgust one night when my pal opened his basket and caused the lid to creak rather loudly. He stormed off in disgust, muttering that all the bream in the mere would now be spooked and it was a waste of time carrying on. The fact that they were legering at 40yds range was neither here nor there. The point was that you just did not make any noise at all when specimen hunting. No way! It is true that noise should be kept to a minimum when fishing for specimens. It is a fact too, that excessive noise does not marry well with fishing of any description, but to take umbrage to that extent because of a creaking basket lid simply means that you’re well on your way to becoming a basket case yourself.

Nowadays, a number of my friends and I think nothing of boat fishing for big fish, float fishing for them as close as two rod’s length away in darkness, and hardly any greater distance in daylight. When we consider it necessary we will leave a bivvy encampment where the leger rods are set up, to slip out in the boat and float fish the already baited swim. The decision will be made to abandon the legering approach and float fish if we think it is essential to present a bait on the more versatile and sensitive float tackle. Such tactics were unthinkable not too many years ago, and still are with some die-hards of the specialist world. To approach a swim, where the fish are already feeding, with a boat, no matter how quiet and stealthy the approach, is tantamount to angling suicide, so they think.

It can be amazing just what fish will tolerate at times, for quite often when you are thinking that an accidental noise (or some other kind of disturbance) you’ve made has put paid to your fishing for a while they surprise you by continuing to feed as though nothing has happened. Or by ignoring your obvious presence in, or close to, their territory. More than once I’ve drifted across the surface in a boat right over one or two, or a shoal, of big fish, only for them to completely ignore the boat, and me peering over the edge of it. At most they have casually drifted away, and many times simply carried on doing whatever they were doing at the time. I do believe, though, that on many occasions when this happens it is because the fish are sleeping, or at least their version of sleeping, and really are unaware of our presence.

One time I will never forget was when I had anchored the boat in a swim 40yds from the bank and had thrown in a bucket of groundbait, followed by a scattering of maggot and caster. Before I hauled up the mudweights I lay across the boat and peered into the shadow it cast on the bottom to see if I’d managed a good spread of bait over the swim. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing when I spotted this big, black shape obviously hoovering up the caster and maggot. It was a bream of at least 9lb. What made it more incredible was that I hadn’t tried to be particularly quiet about anchoring the boat and baiting the swim, for this was 5pm on a sunny day, and at least six hours away from the time you could expect a bite on this notoriously difficult bream water. I still haven’t figured that one out, and have never had a bream from that water, before or since that incident, fishing at the time it happened. And that incident really inspired me to try, I can tell you!

Isn’t it true that some species are far more tolerant of disturbance than others? The best example of this is where tench are concerned. Many, many times I have hooked and played a tench that fought so well it almost churned the swim to foam; mud and debris swirling around as a result of the tench boring along the bottom in the swim. Then, a mere minute or two later, as fast as it took to unhook the fish and present a new bait in the swim, another tench is hooked. There is often a good explanation for such behaviour, the most likely being that the disturbance caused by a hooked tench is akin to the turmoil created when they are spawning. But this has happened to me many times when spawning has been long finished, or well before it is due to begin.

No, there is no doubt that tench are not a fearful fish, and they support that view very clearly when they begin to feed in a swim almost immediately following it being terrorised by a big rake dropped in from a boat, or thrown from the bank, and hauled out several times screaming with weed. If there is ever a time I am hovering over my rod like a hawk over a dove it is following my first cast into a raked swim. The tench are drawn to the swim like a magnet, either because of the disturbance, or in spite of it, in their haste to feed on the food the raking dislodges. Splashing can be as much an attraction to fish as a deterrent, so perhaps it is the splashing of the rake going in that causes the tench to home in on the swim immediately the splashing is finished. I reckon tench are like cats, (the feline type, not catfish) with an insatiable degree of curiosity that often gets them in trouble, the trouble in this instance being a baited hook.

It is well known that some barbel are attracted to the splash of a big swimfeeder crashing through the water’s surface. They have become accustomed to the noise and have learned to associate it with a free offering of food. They know that if they lie downstream of the disturbance it will not be too long before a steady stream of tasty titbits comes their way. On heavily fished rivers, where barbel are subjected to a frequent bombardment of feeder-fed food it is not uncommon for them to actually attack the feeder once they are well on feed. Invariably, though, this is only the case on the major rivers, like the Severn, and particularly the middle reaches, that have a large head of hungry barbel almost continually on the look-out for food.

Throwing a 2oz feeder, filled with several ounces of feed, into the upper Severn, or into any small river, is not the thing to do. It is more likely to scare the barbel into the next stretch than it is to attract them to your hookbait.

Noise and disturbance can also be used to attract pike, or to cause them to waken from a dour mood and change to attack mode. When all conventional tactics have been tried it is often worthwhile taking the boat right into where you expect the pike to be lying and whacking the surface with an oar. Bazaar tactics I know, but many times we have shocked the pike into leaving the confines of a weedbed and into open water, where they have vented their anger onto anything that moved, particularly our lures and/or live and deadbaits. But I must say it again, such tactics are a last resort, the last thing you try, not the first, or even the second.

There are many cases where minor moments of noise and disturbance attract fish. The slap of a brace of Chum Mixer landing on the surface from a great height can do the trick when the same bait, cast gently and almost unnoticed, lies ignored by the carp. The same species can also be attracted to the multiple plopping of boilies hitting the surface when the swim is fed from a catapult or throwing stick. The wide-scale use of spodding on some carp waters attracts rather than deters. Bream often rise to a groundbait feeder that has smacked onto the surface and begun to spray its load of goodies through the water as it sinks.

There are many more instances where noise plays a positive role in fishing that you can no doubt recall from your own experiences.

It should always be remembered, however, like all matters to do with fishing, that noise and disturbance, and the effect it has on fish, is all relative to the situation at the time. Where a good slapping of the surface one day will make pike come out fighting, another day it could cheese them off to the point where they withdraw even further. A heavy feeder cast into a shoal of barbel that are already well fed may have the effect of scaring them out of the swim altogether, whereas a small bait on a light leger may have tempted one or two.

The answer, of course, is to always try the conventional before delving into the realms of the unconventional. Yes, use noise to your advantage when you think it is what is needed on the day, but do everything you can to make sure it is what is needed before going ahead. And remember that no matter what a good friend noise can be some days, there are many other days, even with the same species on the same water, when it can be your worst enemy.

My policy is, and always has been, to be as quiet as possible when fishing, not simply because it could scare the fish, but because peace and quiet are good partners of fishing. Noise and disturbance can, and should, be used to your advantage when necessary, but always remember that loud friends should be treated with utmost caution.