Roach Reflections

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Whip Fishing - Part 4 - Tackling a River:

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Just to round off my short series on whip fishing (I may return at a later date) here's Part 5:

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There's fishing fine, and there's fishing fine! Find out what happens when I finally get around to using a one pound main line thirty years after getting a match fishing masterclass from waggler ace Gary Etheridge on the Bristol Avon:

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One swim and a change of bait brought interesting results on the Dorset Stour:

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Before the floods I got out on a pleasant October day on the Dorset Stour, and it was fun to alternate between maggots, casters and a combination of the two.

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This week's video about a session when the roach barely moved the float:

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About three years ago I acquired a Normark Microlite 12ft match rod. It's a light action rod ideal for fine lines and small hooks at close range but I struggled with the old-fashioned reel fittings. Last week I finally got around to changing them to a screw down fitting and the rod is now a delight to use as seen in this video:

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With the rivers in flood I've been fishing local stillwaters and trying out some different patterns of small barbless hooks. Here are my thoughts:

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With the rivers across the fields I take a look at a worrying decline in roach numbers on my local stretch of the Dorset Stour:

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With floods dominating my local rivers I had a short session waggler fishing and found that they was I was striking made a difference to how many bites I hit: