| #1  08-12-2010, 08:14 AM | |||
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| River fishing Hello all! I'm here to ask a few questions about river fishing and I hope you'll bare with me for a while. I am new at fishing, so recently I went to the store, told the guy I wanna go out fishing and I need a rod and a reel and he gave me a carp rod and reel. After a few visits to a nearby lake, I realised I don't really want to spend the day looking at the rods and I'd like a more active approach. Then I started using it a bit more, but since it's awful heavy, my arms started hurting in a while. On top of that, the rod is 4m long, so it gets really hard to manipulate it in less than ideal conditions. Casting if there's any growth above me is impossible for me. So, I headed to a nearby river, not too clean, not too murky water, flowing at appx. 4-5MpH, with a bridge crossing it (I went under the bridge into a little pond created by the current) and tried my luck there. The results were a lot better and I managed to catch some nice silver fish on worm and bread, but they never even looked at corn or maggots (or when they did, the swarms of small fishies tore the maggots off the hook). I used 0.14 nylon and #14 hooks. Casting in the middle of the river (appx. 15m away) with an open ended feeder packed with corn, artificial food, pellets, sardines and oil gave absolutely no results and I only managed to lose a feeder to the rocks. Now, the river definitely has fish in it. I have had visual contact with some predatory fishes surfacing and chasing small fish around (I'm guessing it's Asp feeding). I have also seen some bream and roach, so there's definitely fish around there. Maybe not capital ones, but solid. Now, to get to my question (finally): My current rod and reel are 4m carp and it's quite heavy to handle, but I'm not really that rich that I can go into the shop and just but all the best stuff all over again. Also, the rivers I'd be fishing would be roughly 5-10 feet deep with rocky, uneven bottom and side-growth in abundance. I'd like to try and fish something at around 0.5-2 kg top as I really like to eat what I catch and I'm not there for the trophies...and I don't really care what it is, bream, roach, asp, zander... I know this doesn't sound good in the ear of the C&R fisherman, but we all have our thing...I like the idea of fishing to eat. - What kind of a cheap rod and reel would you recommend for such conditions and a more active approach to fishing? - What kind of a bait would you recommend? - I considered using the Castmaster and DTP baits, but since I don't know anything about anything, I'm usually so overwhelmed by the amount of baits that I just don't by anything. - Would I be better off using a light rod and reel and using underhand casts while using an abundance of maggots in the water to draw the fishies and if so; - How do you stop the little swarms of fish from tearing off your maggots from the hook? And the last: - Could you tell me what kind of a rig would be preferred for fishing with a fake lure (Castmaster) and what kind for fishing with the underhand cast close to the shore? I can explore what the rig is like on my own, but there's so many of them and I have so little time to actually try them all out that I -really- need someone to tell me 'use THAT one'. I am sorry to make this 'the story of my life', but I really have no one experienced to talk to where I live and I really need some detailed help if I'm gonna go and spend more money on rods and reels. Thank you for any responses you might give and I apologize once more for wall-of-textin' you. Have a nice day! Vex     |
