How to Catch Silvers to Hand

First Published in English.

Every winter, more and more silver fish venues seem to be cropping up on my match schedule and it’s the anglers that are speed fishing for roach and skimmers to hand that seem to be dominating the top spots, so it was time to purchase Browning’s new Sphere Silverlite System Whip and put it through its paces.

Too big to swing

Having fished the flick tip to hand for roach and toughly enjoyed the experience earlier in the week it was time to head to another venue, one equally full of silvers, however with the chance of a carp or big bream barging in on the action I needed to elasticate one of the hollow top kits just in case. The venue, Lodge Pond controlled by Farnham Angling Society is teaming with silvers and after scratching around on the Kennet and Avon Canal the previous week I was looking forward to swinging in a fish hopefully every put in, however I knew sooner or later something a bit too big to swing would come along.

Into position

Tackle had to be thought through prior to the session so I decided to run Xitan1.9mm Microbore Pink, which has a 7-9 rating through the No 1 and 2 sections and fish at 6m to hand. The rig consisted on 1g Tamgi pole float, with the tip blackened out placed on a Cenex 0.16mm Hybrid Power Mono and cocked using a 0.6g inline olivette plus three No 8 and one No 11dropper shot that I’d placed on a short six inch 0.12mm Hybrid Power hooklink with a Sphere size 18 micro barbed Feeder Ultra Lite hook completing the set-up. I’d also added a single No 8 back shot above the float for extra stability. The reason for using a 1g float, even on this shallow venue, is that it can be swung out into position easily and is still delicate enough to show up the slightest of bites associated with skimmers.

If they were like this every cast.

Microbore elastic, just in case.

Weight builders.

"Every drop in resulted in a bite within seconds"

Little and often

As for bait I’d bought along both casters and maggots, the casters intended to pick out the bigger fish if small fish became problematic on maggot plus a bag of Champion’s Feeder Quick Skimmer for obvious reasons. Three balls of groundbait, which had been run through a fine riddle a couple of times was introduced from the off with the intension of loose feeding maggots or casters every put in for the entirety of the short session.

Perfect performance

Straight away it was obvious that the swim contained loads of small roach that were just smashing the maggots to bits so immediately I switched to casters, slowly increasing the feed in the hope of drawing in some bigger roach and skimmers. Every drop in produced a bite within a couple of seconds and it wasn’t long before the elastic started to stretch from the tip as a small carp powered off but the pole coped with the situation perfectly and the first bonus fish was in the net. Even though the bigger roach and skimmers didn’t show in any great numbers I’d still put together a really enjoyable double figured bag in just a couple of hours and the Sphere Silverlite System Whip once again performed perfectly in every situation.

Justin Watkins