Now these areas will be evenly paced glides

Without doubt the very best winter roach fishing is when the river is high and coloured as long as this condition is not caused by snowmelt water. We need to start looking for the roach where we would expect to find them in summer and then look around to see where they would move to in flood conditions with the least effort. Roach are conditioned to areas of what they see as normal flow of water so when the river is in flood they will search out an area that now has a flow the same as they are accustomed to.An ideal area would be an area in the margins of the river that in summer would be a very shallow gravel run or even perhaps completely dry gravel bank. This area would now be ideal with 3 to 4 foot of floodwater over the top. These areas will be away from the main current and could well hold many good sized roach. They are in fact very common on small to medium rivers, the river Wey and Kennet where I used to fish had several of such areas in fairly short stretches of river. A small swimfeeder would be an ideal tactic in this situation – as would laying on with a tight line using redworms, breadflake or lobworm as bait. Another good area would be a steady glide alongside dead rushes that would usually be 4 to 6 feet but with flood conditions will be a nice 7 to 10 feet deep. However if the flood is too strong and therefore the water becomes too turbulent or ‘boily’ the roach will move out. A third good place to explore are the areas that in summer are sluggish or slack water. Now these areas will be evenly paced glides. Trotting with maggot feeding handfuls of mashed bread could well produce a good bag of large roach. In fact these swims are probably the best swims of all for a good bag of winter roach. Flake cast to the far end of the glide at dusk could well produce a very big one. The downstream side of promontories will be slack and stale in summer but in a winter flood will produce steady glides and in a strong flow the roach will shelter in the bay behind the points. In very high water, new swims are created where bushes that are usually above water in summer are now in the water. The main flow of the river will be pushed out into mid-river by these creating back eddies and areas of slack water, these are worth a try. A large lobworm cast upstream to behind the bushes will produce, if a roach is present – careful you don’t connect with a chub though! Talking of chub, roach like rafts just as much as chub do, so scale down and use breadflake, the best of all baits for a big roach. The best time of all though for a really big roach is when the river is fining down after a heavy flood. This is the time that a roach of a lifetime might be caught.Have fun

John Young