Sunday Morning Roaching

Arriving at the venue, there wasn’t a soul about, just me and the cold morning air. I could hear the sound of a few birds whistling, breaking up the otherwise silent morning. I’m fishing a new stretch of river not far from home in Hertfordshire – it’s quite small in width, around 8 metres across and about 5 feet deep at the deepest point.

Mixed bag

I decide on a centre pin reel on a 10′ Avon rod and then I trot down the nearside bank. There’s a lovely little bush around 12 metres down and it looks like a nice little hide-out for some good roach and, if I’m lucky, a chub too. I get out the bait before anything else and start to feed the swim, trying to get the fish feeding confidently while I’m setting up my gear.

For a start I throw in a couple of handfuls of hemp quite close to the bush and then start to trickle in some casters. The ones thrown in closer to me drift down and end up in the same place as the hemp, which is heavier and sinks more quickly.

Next I poured a coffee and thought about tackling the rod. As I have already mentioned I am using a centrepin reel with 2 lb main line and a hook to nylon size 20 with 1.5 lb breaking. The float is an Avon style cork body float. I put on around 6 No 4 shot bunched at around 20 inches from the hook as I want to get the bait down nice and quick. I use a No 10 around 6 inches from the hook, and I’m fishing slightly overdepth as I want the bait to slowly glide the bottom.

Firstly, I cast and let the float go down at the same speed as the current and I’m onto a fish right away. In the net she goes and I’m still feeding just 3 or 4 casters every cast to keep the bait slowly falling through the swim. It was a nice little roach of around 3 ounces. I cast again and this time I catch a dace.

Chubber and his 1.13 roach

Next cast and this time I don’t let the float glide the run, instead I cast right near the bush and hold the bait steady letting it just nip under the bush. I am holding and waiting and in a few seconds the float zooms off and I’m into a fish. This time the fish takes me all over – such a show-off; it ducked and dived and seemed to have an outboard motor behind it! It dived into the streamer weed and there it sat for a while. I could do nothing with it at all, but then with steady pressure I managed to get the fish moving again and now I’m back in control. Nice and easy Chubber, I said to myself, don’t lose it now my mate – and in she came, a lovely roach gliding over the net.

This fish weighed in at 1 lb 13 oz; OK not a record but such a lovely fish that I’d be glad to catch any day of the week. All on a centrepin reel too! My Sunday morning was getting better by the minute. Safely photographed and put back in the water – it was time for coffee and to calm myself down. I felt that it was important to keep feeding as this fish made quite a splash so no fishing for now – just feeding, coffee and a smoke.

I continued fishing on that day and got a total of 5 lb 13 oz of roach and 2 lb 5 oz of dace.

I don’t boast to be a writer but I wanted to share my Sunday morning with you. I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I’ve enjoyed (trying) to write it. Next time I’ll try harder.