The power of the flow needs to be considered. At the moment, the Wye where I live is up to its banks and powering through. Anyone trying to use a feeder or a PVA bag in the fast water will just have it washed straight downstream. Putting groundbait in is a futile exercise - again, a washout straight away. The only purpose for it at the moment is to use as a vehicle to introduce heavy pellets, which are the only freebies with a chance of staying in the swim. Golfball sized balls rather than orange sized.
So I use a straight lead with a big bow in the line to fish the fast water in flood conditions. I might introduce free samples via ground bait balls and might not... Fish the slacks and the feeder or pva works fine.
I had two barbel in a 2 hour session this afternoon fishing just hookbaits.
Might sound strange but I recon really tiny particles also stand a chance in a heavy flow of staying in place. Hemp droppered down, some will catch in the gravel and hold.
You can test it in shallow fast clear swims. The hemp sort of beds down into the gravel and Barbel love rooting it out.
About bait size I think Ray Walton amougst others used to use great big lumps of meat when he was rolling. I get Tiggers point however and you dont want to miss out on fish either by making it so big they cant get it in their mouth.
When I fished some of the more pressured stretches of the Kennet I used to slide several smaller bits of meat up the line above the hook to sort of create a "string" of baits and that seemed to work ok too.
As for lead or feeder, if I know I can get my feed in the right spot from the bank I'll just go with a lead as its just simpler than messing about with a feeder each time and makes less disturbance when you cast in.
