John Bailey – The Kingfisher Diaries
March 29th 2010
Methods that Travel
Just back from some filming down in Spain where I found a normally small, crystal clear river to be a raging torrent. Seems it rained for ever down there with disastrous consequences for many householders up and down the valley.
The only chink of light in the devastation was the fact that the Spanish barbel, very beautiful Andalucian barbel at that, was still in residence. And, I caught them by using tactics almost identical to those you would employ for small river, English chub. It seems it's a method that works well in any country for most similar species. What are the rules then?
- Touch legering with a nine to eleven foot rod, correspondingly light reel and line and weights dependant on the species and the water speed. Ideally, you will use as little lead as you can get away with.
- Baits tend to be large and visible and often smelly, too. Interestingly, the Spanish barbel much preferred corn to any variety of meat. Pellets work in these sorts of conditions and so do natural like worms.
- You work the river fast. You look for little slacks and lay-bys and eddies, try them for five minutes and if there isn't a hint of a fish at home, you move on. That's the beauty of touch legering: even if you're not getting a full-blooded bite, you'll feel the little twitches and ‘zings' as fish give you line bites. If the line is completely dead, you can assume there is nothing about.
- You don't bother with rod rests and you travel as light as possible. A few hooks, a few weights, a net and a bag of bait and you're fit to go. Travelling like this you can fish two or three miles at least during the course of a day. This is often important on a lot of our English lowland rivers like the Wensum these days as chub now are so scattered. I won't use the otter word again, though, I promise!
- One good way of attacking a river like this is baiting up all the swims as you work downriver. Decide on how much water you can tackle in the time you have available to you. If you've got all day, you might be able to bait up twenty swims over a two, three or even four mile stretch of river. Then, when you reach the bottom of your stretch, you simply fish your way back up to your car or whatever. Putting in that little bit of bait into a swim beforehand often builds up the confidence of spooky fish. Your own bait is grabbed with gusto as a piece that has been left over and missed.
- The advantages of this quick-fire approach are obvious. Basically, you are fishing into swim after swim for fish that aren't particularly spooked. Remember the longer that you're in any particular swim, the more the fish will know that you are present and build up resistance. By travelling lightning fast like this, you're constantly looking for fish that are pretty unaware of your presence. Providing, of course, that you travel quietly and keep low. Come the summer, when the river season opens, this is exactly how I will be doing my chub fishing at home, here on the Wensum, but on other rivers like the Avon, Bure, Yare, Waveney, Teme and even the Wye itself.
