UK Coarse
Rig
Shirt-button shotting down a stick float so you can hold, ease, and mend a bait down a river crease.
The shot is strung down the stem, not bulked under the float like a stillwater waggler. That lets you hold back and lift the bait. Line is mended so the bow doesn't drag the float in.
Rivers only in the open season (16 June–14 March in England and Wales for the statutory coarse close).
Stick float 4–12no.4, shirt-button shot, 3–5lb mainline, 18–30 inch fine hooklength, size 16–20.
Float attached top and bottom with rubbers. Shot down the line. Hooklength. Plumb, then fish a crease after 16 June.
Waggler bulk on a stick. Never mending. Fishing it on a stillwater. River in the close season.
Technique
Trotting a river
Running a bait down a river at the pace you choose. Stick, Avon or bolo — the skill is the same. After 16 June on rivers in England and Wales.
Technique
Hemp and tares
A summer river (and sometimes canal) way to sort stamp roach: feed hemp until they graze, then a tare — or a single grain of hemp — on a fine hook. After 16 June on rivers.
Technique
Chub float tactics
An Avon more often
Technique
Avon float
A buoyant cousin
Technique
Stick float
A river float designed to run a bait down a crease at the pace you choose. Maggot, hemp and a mended line — after 16 June.
Technique
Chub fishing
A bait where they live: under a bush, in a hole, down a crease. Bread, maggot, cheese, worm, a lure on some stretches. After 16 June. First cast counts.
Technique
Barbel fishing
A heavier trot
Species
Dace
The small, quick silver of clean rivers. Stick float, maggot, and a strike that has to be faster than the fish.
Species
Roach
The silver that made canal and river fishing. A proper roach — brick-red fins, clean scales, that violet eye — is still one of the most satisfying fish you can catch.
Species
Chub
The opportunistic river fish. Bread, cheese, maggot, a chubber float or a quiet leger under a bush — and they will still surprise you on a canal.
Bait
Hemp
Cooked hempseed. A holding bait for roach, a bed for barbel, and the reason tares still exist.
Bait
Tares
A small dark pea fished over hemp. The summer river-roach bait people forget they know.
Bait
Maggots
The universal bait. If you could only have one thing in the bag for a mixed UK stillwater or canal, maggots would still be the answer.