With increasing rainfall and many of our rivers flooding on a regular basis each year, at some point you will be faced with a chocolate brown river. Whilst at first you may feel like turning around and heading home, there can be plenty of fish to be caught as long as you get the tactics and location right.
If the river is high and coloured, the fish will naturally migrate to more sheltered areas, this is when location and picking where you fish is important, if you get this wrong there simply won't be any fish to catch. Similarly, if you don't match your tactics to the conditions, you won't get the best out of your session.
Fish the pole feeder
Sometimes, the flow caused by extra water will be too strong to fish the pole, even with a flat float. The answer is a hybrid tactic called the pole feeder. This basically sees you fish a feeder on the pole with only a length of line leading to the feeder and hookbait. Feed groundbait and lower the feeder over the spot, and then keep a tight line to the feeder by putting the pole in a bump bar on your seatbox. Bites will show up as positive bangs on the pole tip and can sometimes pull the elastic out! It’s very much a big-fish method using big hookbaits.
CHOOSE THE BEST POLE FOR YOUR RIVER FISHING WITH OUR BUYER'S GUIDE.
Look for smooth water
Where will the fish be when there’s extra water in a river? Roach and bream prefer even, steady-paced areas known as ‘smooth’ water. Any part of the peg where there are swirls or boils on the surface signals uneven flow and possibly snags. Spend some time looking at the water and the pace too – if the flow is ripping through, it might be too fast to catch from. Slacker water will then need seeking out, and this is normally found closer to the bank.
HIGH WATER OFTEN MEANS UNSTABLE BANKS, MAKE SURE YOU'RE SAT COMFORTABLY WITH ONE OF THE BEST FISHING CHAIRS.
Use Fluoro hookbaits
Visibility will be minimal in coloured water, so hookbaits need to be made as easy as possible for the fish to find. Bright fluorescent pink maggots and pinkies are winners compared to bronze or white colours, and can be fished in twos, or even threes, on the hook. Adding them to groundbait is also good, typically packing as many into the mix as you can. Another great coloured water bait with an eye on big fish is a lobworm tail, this releases lots of juices into the water and is much loved by perch and bream.
LOOK TO ADD LIQUIDS, BOOSTERS AND ADDITIVES TO INCREASE THE ATTRACTION OF YOUR GROUNDBAIT.
Rely on groundbait
Firing bait in with a catapult will only spread the fish out down the swim, making them hard to pin down and catch. In coloured water, the aim is to have the fish feeding in one spot where you can lower in a rig or cast a feeder to.
That means groundbait as your main feed. The target fish in a coloured river will be roach, bream and skimmers, and groundbait is just made for them.Pot in several balls of a sticky mix designed for rivers that holds lots of goodies such as casters, pinkies and chopped worm on to one spot, and then fish the rig tight over this.
Target big fish
When rivers colour up with warm rain, big bags of bream win matches, and quality roach, barbel and perch can appear from nowhere, so your plan needs to factor these in.
Keep a part of your swim reserved for a big-fish line using worms or bunches of maggots on the hook, and feed here more positively with lots of bait, because a group of hungry bream can easily polish off a few balls of groundbait. A great line for this is just at the bottom of any marginal slope or shelf where the deepest part of the swim begins – a good spot for perch.
FANCY CATCHING A SPECIMEN BARBEL? CHECK OUT OUR WHERE TO FISH GUIDE TO FIND ONE LOCAL TO YOU.
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