Bumping Fish, Missing Unmissable Bites and Catching in Snatches.

Roach fishing, as we all know, can be a frustrating experience, not only are your quarry a wary and at times shy biting species with a tendency to favour one bait over another on any given day but they tend to move in easily scattered shoals and are influenced by the presence of pike and other large fish. Other species of fish, in comparison, are often more predictable perch and chub for example are gluttonous creatures, bream on some waters will arrive in certain swims at a certain time of day like clockwork and even carp, regarded by many as the most intelligent of fish, aren't half as clever as they are given credit for.

We arrived at Stockton Res at 10am, earlier than in recent weeks, and planned to fish until about 2.30, our chosen spot was the reedy corner at the bottom end of the lake in pegs one and two. Tactics employed were to be as before, strong match rods, floats and small hooks with mixed maggot for hookbait.

Surface debris, floating reeds presumably a result of the resident water bird's friskiness, hampered our presentation to some degree but bites were soon coming our way and the first of the days roach were caught. This is the point where you are tricked into thinking that it is easy, bites are frequent and positive and roach of four to six ounces come to hand almost every cast.

As each session wears on bites invariably become lightning fast with the float shooting away in unmissable fashion only for the strike to meet no resistance, worse still, on occasion, a fish is bumped off. Even more frustrating than that is the incompatibility of catching silver fish using barbless hooks, the twisting, turning fight of such fish inevitably resulting in a percentage of fish simply falling off the hook. Small skimmers seem to be the worst for this.

At this point of the session I usually feed my main swim (about three rod lengths out) with a good three pouches of maggots and resort to fishing a pre-prepared swim close in and to one side, here bites are once again positive and easy to hit with small rudd and perch showing up among the roach but sport is usually short lived.

Back out in front for the last hour and the pattern has changed again with longer periods between bites but the bites when they come are once again more positive and the fish slightly bigger at about 8oz. When we packed up in brilliant spring sunshine we were of the opinion that we'd had a good day, dad and I had both caught plenty of rudd, perch and roach. However, questions still remain unanswered.

For now we will persevere at Stockton as it seems to be fishing as well as anywhere, an angler fishing the disabled pegs had caught steadily on long pole and pellet throughout the day and included some chunky looking crucians along with carp in his catch, he had fished in a different area of the lake the previous day where he had caught several good carp and some pound plus roach on this method. Other reported catches included several carp a day to anglers fishing the method feeder so maybe, with warmer water and more active fish, it's time to change our approach.