Darren Starkey shows how staying mobile can be the key to locating the biggest fish in your favourite running-water stretch
PASSIONATE anglers may still get the same buzz from the sport as they did when they first wet a line, but finding time to get on the bank is proving harder than ever for most.
Family and work commitments eat into prospective fishing time, leaving many to look for different ways to still get their quick fix.
The obvious answer is to stop taking the kitchen sink along and getting cosy in one spot for the duration of the session, and to turn to roving instead.
This pro-active approach to catching river fish requires only minimal preparation and the bare minimum of kit and, best of all, it will actually enhance your chances of putting more big fish in the net!
You can cover so much water, hopping from swim to swim, spending only a short amount of time in each.
I do a lot of this style of fishing on the majestic River Wharfe. Rising high in the Yorkshire Dales, she flows through spectacular scenery while winding her way to the confluence with the RiverOuse just south of the city of York.
It’s a waterway of big contrasts, often changing rapidly from shallow glides, barely deep enough to wet your ankles, to darker, far steadier water. Although home to a host of species, many to specimen proportions, it’s the chub and barbel that get most of my attention.
For the purpose of this feature, the day-ticket stretch at Boston Spa seemed the ideal place to show how effective a mobile approach can be, so I headed there armed with just two rods, a rucksack, lightweight chair, landing net and a bucket of bait.
First-choice float
My favourite tactic at this time of year is floatfishing. The fish have less time to inspect a moving bait than they do a static one, and you are also covering all the swim, giving you a better chance of nailing it right in front of their noses.
Pegs that tend to produce well on the float often have a good pace to them, and range in depth from around 2ft-5ft. For tackling these I thread a dumpycrystal float of 3g-5g onto my 8lb line, which can be fished straight through to a strong size 12 hook.
I usually use an olivette to load the float, but conventional split shot work just as well. My favourite ‘hardware’ consists of a Drennan Acolyte Plus 14ft rod paired with a trusty Okuma Sheffield centrepin. If you have never caught a barbel ‘on the pin’ before you really must give it a try – it’s up there with the most exciting thing our sport has to offer!
My bait for the day consisted of a couple of packs of Dynamite Baits The Source luncheon meat and two tins of the matching hempseed. The meat was diced into 6mm cub
