A Case of the Trots — Chub on the Wye

Having set my heart and mind on a quest to understand the full gamut of possibilities offered by various forms and styles of trotting bait, I've decided to run a series of case studies that might be of use as notes to myself and a more thought provoking technical study to other anglers than my run-of-the-mill diary style posts. I want to look at the subject in-depth, think critically about the problems encountered, write up what I've learned about a range of different venues, the different approaches necessary to get the best from them and cover as full a spectrum of species as possible, from barbel and chub, to dace, roach, perch, grayling and trout. And if I get the time to try, perhaps pike and zander too.

In short — if trotting will catch it, I'll try for it, and then I'll write about it.

A Case of the Trots — Chub on the Wye
With Steve Phillips

The middle Wye was something of a new experience for us both. Strewn with boulders over flat sheets of bedrock, shallow throughout the stretch with few deep pools, rapid water here and there with large areas of almost still water between, the summer river was about as low as it could be and made difficult because of it.

Almost nothing could have been accomplished from our bank because it was clear from the outset that fish were not going to be found within easy reach. We could see bottom all along, there wasn't a fish of any size to be seen anywhere, and water that looked promising was far off and along the far bank. 

Wading was essential. It offered the chance to roam at will and cover the entire stretch in search of our quarry, which was ostensibly, barbel. But actually, we'd both agreed after an initial foray into the water itself that we'd catch whatever we could because it looked pretty difficult to locate anything worth catching out there, let alone meet our mission intentions.

We agreed to split and go find interesting areas. Steve sporting a barbel rod and lumps of meat went upstream of our base camp to attempt trundling the bait through whatever flow he could find with enough pace to shift it. He wound up at a natural rock dam where below there was enough power to do that successfully. 

I decided to seek fish by way of trotting a single red maggot.

I'd boned up on this technique for barbel by reading an excellent article by Chris Plumb where he states that it might take two hours for them to come on the feed, but when they do the results can be magnificent with fish falling one after the other. Hoping that a similar approach would flush out barbel if they were there to be found, I went off in search of suitable water.

Float chosen for the job

Tackle was a 14ft rod, an ABU 506 closed-face reel, four-pound mainline, a size 18 barbless hook tied to three-pound hook-length fished under a brass-stemmed almost self-cocking Avon float (home-made of course!) requiring just a single AAA bulk shot and a number 6 dropper shot. to dot it down. 

An admittedly lightweight set up but one that I hoped would catch almost anything in such clear water but if barbel were found then I'd lose a hook that'd fall out easily if too large for the tackle to handle, would cope with the small ones I expected in such shallow water (though the fight would still be testing!) but if any were found then I'd scale up considerably. 

My approach was to find fish, and any fish would do, believing in such low condition they'd be concentrated in certain places. That was to be the case, though it took some time to prove it. Actually it took a couple of hours to find anything better than minnows! On a break whilst sitting on a flat rock below a second natural dam downstream from Steve's position, a fish topped in the fast water below. Certain it was a trout I went and fished after it.

It was a trout, or rather it was one of a number of trout parr. A good few were caught but they fought too hard and were exhausted by it, turning belly up on release. They recovered when I held them headfirst into the flow, but I thought it pointless catching more so began fishing ten yards further out below the middle of the dam where I began catching salmon smolt (I think?) instead. 

Moving again to a point two-thirds the way across the dam where the flow was most powerful forming a very long and rapid plume (imagine an ostrich feather) over boulders and just a couple of feet deep, I then began trotting just along its near edge. Here the float would start, and stop, and start again, whilst traveling through a succession of eddie currents. There were no bites whatsoever from juvenile salmonids there, and even minnows were absent, nevertheless it seemed the most promising water I'd fished all morning so I stuck at it and began a routine of feeding a small handful of maggots into the plume before each and every trot.

Steve came down to see me reporting a couple of hard-won chub but no sign of barbel. As we talked, I struck my first bite from this new line. Expecting yet another frantically wriggling parr, smolt or minnow, at long last, the rod hooped over hard as a proper fish powered straight into the most difficult place to extract one from — and where else would that be but the fastest water of all!

It wasn't barbel. That was clear. It wasn't large trout either, unless a dozy one. It had to be chub by the sensation of determined heavy thumping transmitted up the line. Steve fetched my net and readied himself, I applied side strain to haul it out the heavy current into the slower water, and when it came clear made my way across the treacherous rocky bed to our bank pulling clear of trouble in a protracted tug-of-war.

But, the hook-hold failed at the last moment! It was a good chub though, as predicted.

Steve went off downstream to fish under and around a large and impressive driftwood tree occupying mid-river. I decided to plug away at this swim for as long as it would produce bites. I didn't have to wait very long for the next. The tail end and each side of the plume became a hive of activity with fish plucking swirling loose feed from the upper surface. A swirl every now and then in the far distance showed that.

Bites came three-quarters the way down the plume's length, slightly to one side and slightly to the other, but never dead-centre. Picking maggots out by eye in the swirling eddy currents, they were nailing them before they were lost to the next fish down.

Approximate angling position and catch points. Nothing of note was found anywhere outside the hotspot

Each came on the dot, ten minutes apart. Within an hour I'd four chub in the net and had lost a couple more to inevitable hook-pulls. All were over four-pounds but none ever threatened to break the fine but well-balanced tackle because in the river you have a winning edge that you don't from the bank. That edge is mobility and the ability to create good angles at will to outwit the fish.

If it takes a lot of line then follow it — when it goes where you don't want it to — then go where it doesn't want you to — which is where it lies.

Fine is good when you're right at the centre of the compass of possibility, and the finer there the better, I'd say! Because, with infinite mobility, on the chessboard of the fight you're no longer the hobbled Knight with his restricted moves, but the Queen! 

No wonder salmon anglers buy waders like they're going out of fashion...

A proper Queen!

Lesson learned good and proper. If only a powerhouse barbel would show I'd prove my theory right! 

Unfortunately, that delicious thought occurred exactly when a flotilla of 20 canoes passed through, and of course they took the most exciting line, which was my productive line. Bites ceased. Then a couple of boys who'd been swimming in the fast current at the head of the swim decided to allow themselves get swept along by it and ended up right in the hotspot. 

My sport was over. Bites never came again...

Would the barbel have shown on the two-hour mark as Chris Plumb had found? I don't know that because I had an hour and three-quarters in that swim before it was wrecked, but if they were there then I'm sure they would have. Never mind. The experience stored in the memory and written down for posterity will be useful in the future.

And the future is this coming Thursday. 

A three day break on the Wark's Avon and a perfect wading trotting swim I've had my beady eye on for some long time. No swimmers and canoeists about to wreck things there, but plenty of barbel who'll fall one after the other...

On the trot, you might say!

But we'll see about all that when the time comes around.


Conclusions

1. The brass wire-stemmed balsa avon with a large domed top was the right tool for job. The fine heavy stem allowed the buoyant tapering float body to ride choppy and turbulent water, upright and effortlessly. However, I could have used a larger float and a change of tip colour would have been useful at distance.
2. The small load of shot allowed the bait to flutter naturally and not drag into crevices in the boulders snagging bottom only once or twice in many hours work.
3. Low shallow water and protracted high temperatures sees fish enjoying the fastest, most broken, and therefore best-oxygenated water available but avoiding areas of long-standing slack with low oxygen levels.
4. Loose fed maggots will travel 50 yards or more in just two or three feet of broken water until they are intercepted and the feeding zone created may be a very long way off. Moving position downstream to counter this only pushes the feeding zone further along and creates a confused zone of dissipation at the tail end where the water force diminishes. 
5. Wading allows for perfect line selection and control. When trotting only a few yards outside of a productive line, bites may cease altogether, or those from different species may be found.
6. Far finer tackle is usable from mid-river than would ever be advisable from the bank because of the unrestricted 360 degree field of play. 
7. Wading in fast rivers full of boulders is potentially life threatening. Even a small amount of extra water in the river would have made standing difficult and moving across boulders treacherous. A lot more water and it would have been impossible. Wade alone at your peril. 

Using a Centrepin for Trotting, Specifically for barbel. Chris Plumb

In My Element

My default for so long now, there had to come a time when sitting on my arse pursuing Rutilus rutilus by way of bread fished hard on the river bed would finally give way to something less static, more mobile, and fluid...

It's been worth the while. I've stocked an immense store of knowledge by doing so. Honing the art to near perfection over thousands of hours of constant practice, thought, experiment, and dare I say some small innovation, I reckon I could now teach even the most experienced roach angler a thing or two they don't already know about finicky redfins, their favourite bait and that trickiest most demanding method of catching them. But, there comes a point where nothing new is learned and this season with the essential core of my entire activity waning I've felt the passion for angling ebb away.

Something had to come. Something had to go. Something had to give...

It was most important that it did. Without a personal centre angling is a nebulous thing prone to vanishing only to be replaced by lesser pursuits, such as golf...

God forbid!

Then Wednesday, Thursday and Friday too — three days on the trot, and the flame of passion was rekindled.

Fishing more intensively and intuitively than I have in years I felt a greater sense of urgency and final achievement each session than I'd have thought possible. 

Yep, 'bread on the lead' is finally put to bed because there's a new love in my life who demands I start from a point of almost zero knowledge and when humbled by mistakes, must swallow my pride and beg a crumb or two myself in the way of instruction from the time-served old masters.

Trotting. Simple in essence, but an art that in any fully-rounded angling career must be learned the hard way or you die wanting. I mean to say — is there a finer angler dead or alive than the one who's nailed it?

NO.

It is the very pinnacle of skill. Makes all alternative forms of coarse fishing trashy by comparison.

When the Late Great Terry Lampard flicked a flake of bread into the Dorset Stour and then caught 'that' 3lb roach for the camera, it wasn't the fish you were impressed with but the man's natural flair. Plucked out of thin air, without apparent effort, you and I in his shoes would have failed and we know it. He succeeded, because he'd long fathomed something we haven't...

Yet!

I don't know how or even why I've avoided it for so long but I wish I hadn't because it's an immensely satisfying thing to practice. Of course I've dallied with it before now but never really put my back into it. It's a wonderfully natural way to fish, though, and especially so when conducted from within the river itself.

Wednesday afternoon that simply wasn't possible in water ten-feet deep but from a couple of pegs hacked out the nettles, Steve Philips and I both managed a fine net of roach, dace and chub from the Warwickshire Avon at Saxon Mill. I even wangled a silver bream! Only my second from the fishery in five years.

As Steve quipped, "Jeff, they'll follow you wherever you go."

Thursday night the venue was a streamy stretch of the same river. After dace I trotted red maggots through a classic glide of smooth water to catch them and succeeded in a way impossible from the bank. Wading up to my waist I was amazed at how effortless it was to fish standing upright with half the weight of the body buoyed up by water.

I was equally amazed by my own ineptness at doing this novel thing!

Water all about changed everything. Nothing solid to rest a thing on, everything had to be either nailed down hard or hung off the bod.

A lightweight landing net handle filled with water, now there's a heavyweight novelty! 

Casting was delightful, control of the float superb, but simple things just defeated me.

I learned the hard way that fish do not require a net to 'land' at any size. But baiting a hook, unhooking a fish, taking a photograph on the fly — it was as if I'd never done either or neither ever before in my life...

When I finally left the water I wasn't nearly so cack-handed as when I first went in, wasn't that pleased with my performance, but had found great pleasure in learning the basics.

As Martin quipped, "I'll have those waders back, Jeff, sooner or very much later..."

Friday. The Wye. And a truly novel experience...

It's a big river viewed from the bank but wading it lowers your sense of perspective. The world looks vaster the further you venture and the deeper you fear to tread, each a step nearer to death should you trip and fall.

That was magical — a heightened awareness of the universe and a diminution of self I haven't felt since my days as a lone ranger bass hunting by night a half-mile distant from land at low ebb tide.

It was unbelievably rocky, uneven and slippery to one newly used to the give and take of mud and loose gravel beneath his feet. As treacherous — but differently so. One minute perched atop a boulder, the next step down to my chest beside it!

I found my feet and my fish, though...

First minnows, then trout parr and salmon smolt too, but later, when most possibilities were exhausted and in the fastest most turbulent water of all, big chub.

Not where I expected them to be, they'd never have been located from the bank no matter what. Too far off, too rocky by half to risk throwing a lead to, only a float could cope and only a maggot long-trotted straight off the tip of the rod traipsing delicately across the smooth rocks would do.

Waders though, They're so bulky! Neoprene is marvelous stuff but weighs a bloody ton when wet. Not a thing you notice in the water of course, but humping them back to the car half a mile you do!

I think I'll not buy a pair when I return the loaned set to Martin but go buy a wetsuit instead. That makes sense to me — you don't have to take it off once you've put it on, can walk easily on dry land, even go to the pub in it without fear of being thrown out again and isn't nearly so perilous in water. Plus, you can get up to your neck in water should you wish to...

Having seen what can be achieved only waist deep,  I do!

As Steve neatly summarised, "Jeff, you're in your element."

He's right. And it is.

Return of the 'Guess the Weight of the Stinky Dead Fish Competition'

My project on the River Sowe has taken a back seat to actually fishing for fish rather than trying to nurture habitat for them, but I've crawled backdown through the head high stingers from time to time to monitor a stream now on its bones, and the fish are still there I'm pleased to say despite the trickle of water passing through.

The roach and perch populations change daily. Once the shoal held a number of large roach, then there was only one matron left guarding her charge of striplings. The largest perch moved upstream and began harrying the minnows in the pool only to return a few days later presumably stuffed full. Then the large roach were back, only to vanish overnight. What's going on I cannot say, only that what is going on is healthy and good.

Peering into the water I noticed the shoal had gained new members. Besides the perch and roach were smaller fish that for a time I couldn't make out clearly, but then the sun emerged from behind a cloud and it was clear they were fair sized gudgeon. Three of them there were, and I watched them a while flitting here and there when out of the blue, who came to join them but a monster!

A simply huge gonk this. Compared to its brethren who were half its size and alongside roach whose weight I can tell you to the ounce from past experience of watching and then catching from the same stream, I estimated if not a record breaker then at least a shaker. It was 8 or 9 inches long!

Then, walking upstream to an area of slack water fringed with reeds, there belly up in the mud was a dead thing with fins. Picking it up and turning it over in the palm of my hand I was shocked to see a fish that I really thought might be have been a valid claim had it been caught on rod and line!

The biggest bullhead I've ever seen, it was getting on for 5 inches in length. Three times the size of any of the very few I've ever caught myself, I simply had no frame of reference to gauge it by.

Leaving it behind I went home and checked the record weight — 1 oz.

Grabbing my 2lb set of Salters from the kitchen I returned with a doggie poo bag and set to the task of weighing it as accurately as possible. Now zeroing manual spring balances for large fish is not exactly an exact science is it? Near enough is near enough. Getting that pointer bang on zero when drams make all the difference in the world with a poo bag weighing next to nothing but actually weighing something, was a trial of patience. But when satisfied, the little big fish was dumped in the bag and hung off the hook.

Blimey!

I very nearly fell over on my pins when the pointer sailed way, way past the ounce mark...

Then I remembered the divisions on this set were not in whole ounces but halves!

Doh!!

Amazingly, a day later I came across another just as dead but equally impressive downstream a way. Once again I set off home for the scales. At just a smidgeon under four and a half inches in length but with such a huge fat head it seemed enormous though the scales returned a lesser weight than for the first.

Still an impressive fish though and proof positive that this river can produce astonishing things given half a chance.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It's been a while, but in my Xmas hard-drive melt down I lost a few spanking specimens to the grave of dead data that I should have published when I found them.  Later I weighed in a dead silver bream hybrid but published that as part of a straight blog when I really should have done one of these bent ones with it.

As Mark H commented on that blog ~

"I rather like the guess the weight competitions and why are you selling your bike?'

Well there's no half an answer to that, but ...

Hazard an educated guess at the weight of the stinky dead fish, if you please!

Summer Carp — One, Two, Three Nil!

After the long heat of the day, in the cool of evening what's more certain to re-invigorate the sluggish, reluctant reflexes than winding yourself into a tight knot of intense anticipation watching a speck of drifting crust? 

Martin walked around the lake dosing every likely holt with chum mixers expecting a free for all within the hour. They didn't show for two hours, and of course, when they did only in the tightest snag swim on the water. Hearing a few slurps, those tell-tale ripples spreading through the blocking submerged tree filling the space between my peg and that peg, I went around to take a look only to be confronted with five carp all happily plucking morsels from the surface film.

I thought they'd be a push over...

An error. That heavy footfall on arrival. Too early a cast, too much of a splash. Selecting the biggest fish of all...?

I don't know exactly what it was that gave me away but within a minute of settling in those carp were wise to my presence. Then what had once seemed easy enough, became tough, when they drifted to the safety of the heaviest snags and sank from sight.

They were still there though. Active carp can't hide themselves away from sight even when they might imagine they have. Tail wash patterns gave them away and the clipped on controller necessary to lend weight enough to swing the bait under the thick cover shifting on its plane showed interest in that attached crust, even if they were sure it was dangerous.

They just can't resist their own instincts with food overhead, can they? They're going to come for it — it's only a matter of when and where. And then, out of the blue comes a mouth... the crust vanishing down a swirling vortex, the line tightening, a strike made, the hook fails to hit home...

Take one.

A new crust is returned but further, deeper, till it's teased more in the snag than out. The plan is to hold my fish, play a crucial first move before it knows what's happened, and have it bolt into the clear. Half an hour later Martin appears on the far bank calling across for reports.

Replying by hand signal, I daren't speak a word...

Returning to his swim a hundred yards away, I can hear him talking quite clearly to Dave Fowler, up from Banbury for the evening, who's fishing an adjacent peg. It would appear there's no carp showing their end!

Earlier in the day, Andy Johnson, down from Bedworth had taken two carp off the top by baiting swims and wandering the banks in search of fish feeding. Alone, the lake to himself before our noisy arrival, working methodically and stealthily I know exactly why he succeeded then. These carp are well aware of anglers about and respond accordingly. Our plan, which would have gone without a hitch on any hungry commercial fishery wouldn't come together here. They were too cute by half.

The crust begins to sink very slowly under its own saturated weight but it's lost from sight before time. An oily swirl is seen and the controller begins to move... not quite sure if the bait has been taken or not, I wait and watch the line exiting the tip ring. Slowly it tightens, then the controller zips under out the corner of my eye — strike, swirl, nothing!

Take two.

As the sun sets I'm sure should I hide myself better than the carp, who are still visible by way of water movements, I'll have one yet. Pitching the bait under that snag though, that's becoming more and more difficult to achieve in the failing light. It's a wind up to the rod top, swing low and sideways under the trailing branches kind of cast — one wrong move and its hung up, a pull for release or break, and curtains for my one remaining chance.

Overcasting, I pull the line back manually to have the the tackle drift as close as I dare near bank and as far under that snag as possible. I can only just see the bread now — flecks of this and that confuse things further. Which is hooked crust, or stray? I can hardly tell the difference...

I give the line a sharp tug — the hooked crust moves an inch and it's clear which is which, and for just long enough.

Peering into the gloom below the bush, lips emerge, suck it down, when...

It's spat back up before I've time to even think let alone move a hand to strike.

Take that, Jeff Hatt!

Cute carp, three nil...