The float drifts away from me, downstream, tugging impatiently at the line. It’s partnered by a newly dropped autumn leaf, gleaming golden in the sun’s rays.
I hold back the float, with my middle finger lightly pressed against the rim of the spool.
Strangely, the leaf also pauses in its journey, seemingly waiting for the float to catch up again, spinning playfully, almost joyfully, in a surface eddy.
A slight dip in the float, ‘Was that a bite?’
Before the question is half-framed in my mind, the quicker part of my brain has already acted. I catch a glimpse of the sunlight dancing on the line as it’s lifted clear of the water, the rod arcing toward the blue sky.
The partly framed question is answered as the rod tip darts down, the float buries deep in the current and I feel the fish pulling on the line.
There’s a broad grin on my face as I lift the net under another dace, scale perfect, and shining.
I’ve caught bigger fish, I’ve caught more powerful fish, I’ve caught more beautiful fish, but there is a special magic about long-trotting with an ancient stick float to take a dace from a flowing river.
Stick float fishing a current is such a fascinating and effective way of taking fish; I wonder why it’s so seldom practised.
Why do people persevere with a waggler in a current? Impossible to control, impossible to present the bait correctly?
I guess part of the answer lies beneath the surface, unseen and uncomprehended.
So, let’s look at what we should be trying to achieve and how to achieve it.
Look at the surface of a flowing river; watch how the water moves.
In the middle, where the river is deepest, the current flows strongly. Toward the banks it flows more slowly, forming swirling eddies. Any angler worth his salt knows where the fish can be expected; feeding in those areas of slack water as food, bought on the current is swirled around.
The reason that the river flows more slowly toward the banks is the braking effect of the banks, and the river bottom in the shallows.
Now, imagine the same thing happening toward the centre of the stream, where the surface current races.
The bottom of the river has that same braking effect as the river’s banks.
At the bottom of the river, the water is moving mush more slowly than at the surface.
There are eddies where the better fish wait, hugging the bottom. Here they don’t have to fight the current; they hug the bottom, waiting for food to drift toward them.
To tempt these better fish, we need to bounce a bait along the bottom, more or less at the same speed as the bottom flow.
Here’s our first difficulty. The surface current whizzes our float along, much faster than the bottom flow.
Simple!
We hold back the float in the current and now hook and float are travelling at the same speed.
Er No!
This is the mistake made by most novice stick-floaters. A mistake which ruins their presentation and sends them fishless, back to snatching tiddlers from the margins.
They’ve forgotten the line between float and hook.
Think what’s happening.
The float is slowed down, the baited hook is down in the slow water at the bottom, but the current still rips at the line between them, causing the line to bow between float and baited hook. And causing the hook to lift off the bottom, into the stronger flow above. That’s not what we want at all.
So how do we tackle the problem?
Think again of trying to fish the far margin, with the line taut across the strong surface flow.
The float is soon ripped away from the far bank by the strong current in the centre of the river. To trot the far margin, we need to let the line bow, perhaps back-shotting the line to sink it below the strongest surface current.
When stick float fishing a current, we need to do much the same kind of thing vertically, between float and bottom fished bait. We fish ‘overdepth’ allowing for the line to bow.
Perhaps I ought to break here and explain the difference between a waggler and a stick float.
Wagglers are floats attached to the line by the bottom only. Great for still water fishing. They allow the whole of the line between rod tip and float, to be sunk beneath the reach of annoying breezes. The only problem is, is that if the float is pulled by a current; it sinks beneath the water.
Stick floats are attached both top and bottom. Should they be pulled by a current, they will tend to lie flat. In fact, they usually have a body. The current passing over the ‘shoulders’ of the body provides lift, which keeps the float upright.
Any slight pull on the line attached through the eye, or silicon tubing, at the bottom of the float, will cause it to dip.
So, back to the main thread.
We need to fish overdepth. How much overdepth? Well, that will depend on the depth of the river, the strength of the current, and the severity of the current gradient.
Keep lengthening the line between float and hook. You’ll soon know when you are too deep. The hook will catch on the debris on the bottom, and the float will dip below the surface. Shallow up and try again, until the float moves smoothly through the water.
Now, is the baited hook moving at the correct speed?
It’s impossible to tell. We need the fish to help us here.
The best way to control th
e speed of the tackle is with a very expensive centrepin reel.
One day I’ll buy one (Ahem! If anyone wants a review written on Anglersnet, for a very expensive centrepin reel, I’m your man!), but for now I make do with a fixed spool reel, loaded to the lip of the spool. Once I’ve cast, and taken in any slack, I open the bail arm to allow the line to drip slowly off the spool, letting the current do the work. I control the speed at which it unspools by resting my middle finger on the lip of the spool, trapping the line and lifting my finger to allow line to feed off the spool at the rate I want. You need to press the finger hard onto the rim when you strike, at the same time tripping the bail arm with the handle. This technique is a bit more jerky than the smoothness that can be achieved with a centrepin, but that may sometimes be an advantage. Read on.
Having introduced a steady trickle of feed into the current, we should start getting bites within 5 or 10 minutes. If no bites are forthcoming, we need to adjust the speed of the float, remembering to re-calibrate the distance between the line and baited hook each time we do this. When we start getting bites, we know we’ve got both the depth and the speed right, and can start fishing in earnest.
This may all sound a bit complicated and daunting, but you’ll soon get the hang of it, and believe me, you are just about to embark one of the most satisfying fishing techniques there is.
So having got the depth right, and the speed at which we want to move the float through the swim right (actually, it’s the speed we want to move the bait over the bottom), how do we bag up?
As with any other form of fishing, choosing the right spot is important, so is feeding.
A steady trickle of free offerings will have the fish lining up along the current ready to intercept the food coming down to them.
As you start connecting with the shoal, and taking fish, the shoal will start dropping drop back down-river. Once you are catching, expect to take fish steadily, further back along the glide, until you are squinting to see the dotted float in the far distance.
This technique isn’t called long trotting for nothing!
Long before this happens, you should start simultaneously baiting another glide, ready to switch to this as the shoal you are targeting drops too far back. Once you have switched to the new glide, don’t neglect feeding the first glide. The fish will gain in confidence and start moving forward again, hopefully arriving in front of you just as you exhaust the shoal in the second glide.
Quickly getting a hook fish away from the shoal will extend the life of the glide.
Instead of pulling a hooked fish directly toward you, along the glide, encourage it to kite away, so that you can bring it to the net across the current, without disturbing the rest of the shoal, waiting for the next handful of free offerings.
If bites are slow, it’s often possible to tempt bites by holding back hard; this causes the hook to lift off the bottom enticingly. I would guess that the jerkiness of line dripping untidily from the lip of a fixed spool reel helps give the bait life in the flow. Perch, in particular, are mugs for this tactic.
When the fish are really on feed, they are likely to rise up in the water competing for the drifting free offerings. You’ll need to shallow up and chase them up from the bottom. If you are getting plenty of bites, then the glide suddenly goes dead; it’s likely that this is what has happened.
You’ll need a set of different stick-floats to cope with different conditions. The ones with metal sticks cut through the strongest current, whereas a lignum stick handles beautifully in a slow, steady and deep glide. Fat bodied chubbers are useful in turbulent or wind-chopped water (great too for mulleting in a strong tide).
A floating line is best, but it needs to feed smoothly through the rings without resistance, so forget that old trick of applying vaseline to make a sinking line float.
Shotting pattern also plays its part in getting the presentation right, but that could lead to another article.
You can also stick float for pike! Using exactly the same techniques as for dace, but with scaled up tackle, and a deadbait instead of maggots. Try holding back as the bait passes a patch of weed and watch that huge stick-float disappear!
Tight Lines,
Leon Roskilly
