Wintle’s World of Angling – Aquarium Gazing

Mark Wintle, an angler for thirty-five years, is on a quest to discover and bring to you the magic of fishing. Previously heavily involved with match fishing he now fishes for the sheer fun of it. With an open and enquiring mind, each week Mark will bring to you articles on fishing different rivers, different methods and what makes rivers, and occasionally stillwaters, tick. Add to this a mixed bag of articles on catching big fish, tackle design, angling politics and a few surprises.

Are you stuck in a rut fishing the same swim every week? Do you dare to try something different and see a whole new world of angling open up? Yes? Then read Mark Wintle’s regular weekly column.

The School Bridge on the Throop Fishery (click for bigger picture)

After a dry start to the season, with prospects of a drought, this summer turned into a mixed and confused mess. Hot humid weather was followed by storms, rain, and gales. But despite the flooding in Cornwall, Scotland and many places from the Midlands northwards, my local rivers have only lifted the odd inch or two. Without the rain that we have had, the levels might well have been as dire as last summer. The only sign of increased flow is that the duckweed is moving, whilst the water remained crystal clear.

In my article on watercraft, I mentioned spotting some big roach on the Dorset Stour. They were too big to ignore, with at least half a dozen fish over two pounds, and plenty more decent sized ones. They’d taken up position in an especially awkward spot right underneath the famous School Bridge on the Throop fishery. Access is only viable from the South bank on the downstream side of the bridge. That’s not to say that it would be impossible to get to them from the North bank; simply even trickier with the added disadvantage of a big willow tree in the way on the upstream side or a massive weedbed on the downstream side. One angler had managed to catch some earlier in the summer by using a 16-metre pole. My pole is only 12 metres so that wasn’t the answer.

The complex currents of the swim meant that the area where the roach were congregated was almost static, whereas on the near side there was a steady current. The depth is substantial too, at around seven feet with thick weedbeds on the far side of cabbages and eelgrass, topped with duckweed. Even in the open water there are plenty of smaller weedbeds dotted about, mostly clumps of eelgrass. The biggest snag to the swim is that this part of the Stour flows from west to east and the prevailing wind is funnelled downstream under the bridge. This, coupled with the drag of the currents, was going to make conventional floatfishing tricky. Just to complete the challenge, these fish get seen by every angler that crosses the bridge, and will have been fished for a few times.

First attempt; mid week evening
I managed to have a go for these roach five days after I had spotted them. Realising that maggots and casters would only encourage the myriads of bleak and small dace just waiting to pounce on just about anything that hit the water, I had decided to base my main attack on sweetcorn, with hemp, tares and casters as backup. I also took some bread. As is often the case during the evening, the wind was still blustery around 5pm, and seemed to be alternating between downstream and off my back. When it was downstream, floatfishing was a complete non-starter, and the spells when it was off my back were too short to be advantageous. I was hopeful that the wind would drop later on.

Paternoster or “Our Father”
With floatfishing initially out of the question, I thought about a link-leger rig. A simple 18 inch tail with a small 1/8 oz bomb on a four inch link. A size 14 hook completed the set up. I baited with sweetcorn and fed a few grains every five minutes or so. My rig soon proved to be useless. The bait was getting buried in silkweed on the bottom. I needed to suspend the bait above the weed. I remade the rig into a simple paternoster with a four inch hook link attached to a tiny loop made two feet above the bomb that was now attached to the end of the line. Believe it or not, this is the first time I have ever fished a rig like this despite seeing it described many times in books and magazine articles.

Stour perch

This was a big improvement, and after half a dozen casts the tip pulled around slowly and I found myself attached to something very heavy. I’d hooked a roach, and by the way it was behaving, it weighed around fifteen pounds. As I’d struck, a pike of perhaps fourteen pounds had grabbed the roach. The pike allowed itself to be towed towards the net, and only let go of the roach when about two feet away. Even then, it lunged at the roach again at the edge of the net but missed. The roach, or what was left of it, was about a pound and had little chance of survival. I returned the roach and the pike promptly took it, and then sat on the bottom turning, and finally swallowing it.

The presence of the pike killed the swim as I sat biteless for twenty minutes. A movement deep in the water beneath my feet distracted me. There’s a six-foot deep hole bordered by old pilings, and from under these, a couple of perch had come out. Bored by the inactivity on the roach front, I got distracted for half an hour, snitching out a minnow by using a pimple of bread on the hook then offering it on the paternoster rig. There were two perch about half a pound each, and I got one and lost one as well as two five inch perch. These are greedy considering the minnow is more than half their length. Having caught them, the perch disappear, and I looked to the roach again.

The wind had changed due to a shower cloud approaching from the South-East. It was now far more favourable for float fishing, being off my back and slightly upstream. I decided to set-up a float rod with a small crowquill Avon and a size 16 hook. Whilst I was perch fishing, I’d continued to feed a few grains of corn across. Guessing the depth at six feet, I baited with corn and cast across. It was a tricky underhand cast as overhanging trees make overhead casting impractical. At first, nothing happened but on about the tenth cast, the float cocked and disappeared down a hole. I struck. I will never know how big the roach that I hooked was but I do know that it was a roach and that it was BIG! Possibly three pounds plus or maybe not. What I do know is that it was an absolute handful. With so much weed in the swim it had me in several weed beds in the thirty seconds that I had it on, and that for much of the time it was difficult to exercise much control over it before it shed the hook. “£ $*$!%$%^*!$%^&*&^%!” – count to 100.

After that, the rest of the evening was an anticlimax. I caught two much smaller roach around six to eight ounces on corn but the big one had told his mates, and they’d all scarpered. I started to wonder if they were just a bit too tricky.

On the following Saturday I returned to Throop. But this time I had a new plan. I fancied a try for a bream up around Barbel Corner. I’d brought everything bar the kitchen sink, including groundbait, casters, and hemp as well as plenty of corn but when I staggered all the way up to that area of the river I found that the only two fishable swims there were taken. There was still too much weed. Perhaps another day? I staggered back, and unable to find a swim that really took my fancy ended back at the School Bridge swim. The roach were still there all right. In the brighter light of late morning, it was possible to see the roach much better; again there were at least half a dozen over two-pounds with plenty more good-sized ones. The biggest one or two that I could see might well shade three pounds.

It turned into what some might call a very lazy day. I fished for the roach when the mood took me, and spent a lot of time watching the roach with other anglers. At times, the big roach would take corn as it fell through the water, ignoring it when it was on the bottom. Just occasionally, a big roach would investigate a piece of corn on the bottom. Other fish were amongst the roach; plenty of small dace that rushed to take tares, some perch, and a pike of about eight pounds that cruised oh so slowly through as the roach took great care to avoid being lined up for a kill. These roach knew all about anglers, that was for sure, but uncatchable? Never. I did get one half pounder but was more interested in learning how the roach behaved, and whether there might be a way of catching them. In the afternoon, it was a pleasure to meet Phil Smith and Stef Horak who were on a chub hunting expedition.

One day I shall return to those roach for another crack, quite when I don’t know. A week later we finally had enough rain to put a foot of floodwater into the river, which certainly shifted some of the muck. Perhaps when the crowds have died down a little in late September, I’ll return, for I certainly saw plenty of good fish of all types to have a go for.

Next week: ‘A Spectrum of Angling’