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Stillwater Blues are a classic float pattern that is perfect for fishing lakes and ponds. They have a long, streamlined balsa body that casts accurately and lands delicately. The ultra-fine cane antenna is sensitive enough to detect tiny bites from shy fish. Stillwater Blues work well for catching crucians, tench, roach, and rudd, especially when fishing a slowly sinking bait "on the drop." Fishing with a Stillwater Blue setup that includes a fine line allows anglers to carefully monitor the float and detect subtle bites as the bait descends.
Stillwater Blues are a classic float pattern that is perfect for fishing lakes and ponds. They have a long, streamlined balsa body that casts accurately and lands delicately. The ultra-fine cane antenna is sensitive enough to detect tiny bites from shy fish. Stillwater Blues work well for catching crucians, tench, roach, and rudd, especially when fishing a slowly sinking bait "on the drop." Fishing with a Stillwater Blue setup that includes a fine line allows anglers to carefully monitor the float and detect subtle bites as the bait descends.
Stillwater Blues are a classic float pattern that is perfect for fishing lakes and ponds. They have a long, streamlined balsa body that casts accurately and lands delicately. The ultra-fine cane antenna is sensitive enough to detect tiny bites from shy fish. Stillwater Blues work well for catching crucians, tench, roach, and rudd, especially when fishing a slowly sinking bait "on the drop." Fishing with a Stillwater Blue setup that includes a fine line allows anglers to carefully monitor the float and detect subtle bites as the bait descends.
At dawn when the mist is rising from the water and the whole surface of the lake is flat calm conditions are just perfect for fishing stillwater blues with their long fine antenna.
Stillwater Blues are a classic float pattern which has
been around for more than 30 years. They have a long streamlined Balsa body
which casts with accuracy
and lands with delicacy rather than splash. The ultra fine cane antenna is perfect for registering tiny indications
from shy biting fish and in
the larger sizes the float has enough length and stability to behave itself even in light cross winds.
In the main the thinner the
antenna the better the bite indication will be, but there are two other factors which influence bite registration. The first one is the weight of the antenna material and the amount of buoyancy left in the portion sitting above the surface. If the material is dense and heavy with little or no residual buoyancy left in the tip, you will tend to get big, slow, exaggerated bites. Its why wire tipped pole floats are so sensitive; there is no buoyancy at all in a wire pole float antenna, just dead weight. As a result they are extremely difficult to shot accurately, can only be fished in the calmest conditions and they have to be greased to hold their position in the surface film. But of course, they just sink right out of sight in response to the merest indication, providing long, slow, practically unmissable bites.
Stillwater Blues: the perfect lake
float
As its name implies, this
is strictly a Stillwater pattern and on small lakes and ponds it has three principle uses :
Exactly the opposite applies
with ultra light weight, highly buoyant material like a fine Peacock antenna, which wants to pop back up to the surface as fast as it can. With such buoyant antenna you tend to get quicker, more staccato dips from shy biting fish which by comparison are much more difficult to read, to time and to strike.
Its ideal for exceptionally
shy biting fish like Crucians or F1s.
Its very useful for Tench
in the margins when they are fiddling about and producing a lot of small indications and false bites.
Bamboo cane dowel is, sort
of half-way between these two extremes. Its neither so dense and heavy that its difficult to shot and gets dragged under by the slightest breeze or drift; nor is it so light and buoyant that you only get quick little dips of the float from shy biting fish. In fact Bamboo is a unique natural material; lightweight and moderately buoyant but incredibly tough and strong.
Its excellent for fishing
a slow sinking bait on the drop for Roach and Rudd.
The second factor which
affects bite registration is the shape of the body underneath the antenna. If the
body is carrot shaped with
the bulk and buoyancy at the top, the float will be more stable but marginally less sensitive. If its the opposite way up with the thinnest part jointing into the antenna and the fatter bulky portion at the bottom, it will be less stable and tend to rock about a bit more. But on the plus side, it will be marginally more sensitive and help to provide better, more prolonged bite indication. On pole floats its simply called body up or body down and the mechanical effects are exactly the same. As with all running line set-ups the reel line has to match the sensitivity of the float. It is no good trying to fish 4lb or 5lb line with a fine antenna, it just wont work. On the pole theres no such problem because you only have a short length of line from pole tip to float but with a rod and reel, heavier monofilament of 0.15 or 0.16 diameter is just too thick to allow a fine tipped float to behave properly. With Stillwater Blues you want a fine copolyamide reel line of 0.10 to 0.12 (2lb to 2 lb) maybe 0.13 (3lb) when using the larger floats in the family. Even then you can only go up to 0.13 providing you are not fishing at too great a distance, conditions are calm and the monofilament is nice and soft and limp. There is no question that fishing a slowly sinking bait is an absolutely deadly method for Roach, Rudd, Crucians and small Carp. Indeed there are numerous occasions when presenting a bait to these species on the drop will catch fish every cast whereas a stationary bait will hardly produce a bite. Provided you choose the right tackle set up; (type of float, fine diameter line, lightweight hook and the
correct shotting pattern), it
is not a difficult method. Of course, its an active style because you are only fishing effectively for that brief period when the bait is actually falling through your swim. So you can find yourself constantly casting and recasting to induce bites. Floats with a long slim body tapering up towards a long fine parallel antenna are just perfect. This is principally because they continue to settle down in the water over the length of their parallel antenna, giving you every opportunity to read the progress of the shot and terminal tackle as it falls through the water. The best shotting pattern is to trap the float between a couple of large shot so that it sits up straight as soon as it hits the water at a point somewhere around the top of the body/bottom of the antenna.
takes for the terminal shot to
sink and for the antenna to settle down in the water from top of body to its fully sunk position somewhere on the fluorescent tip. The length of the antenna in question may only be 4 to 6cm (1 to 2) but it can take between 5 and 10 seconds for the float to settle over that distance. (I know this only because for the first time Ive taken the trouble to use a stop watch and time it for the purpose of this article !) 5 to 10 seconds is actually a long time so its easy to count it down and equally easy to spot any interruption to the settlement sequence, which means a fish has taken the bait and held up
Terminal shotting can then
be kept light and fluid with well spaced No.8s and No.10s. If these small shot are evenly spaced you get an even fall which is, theoretically at least, an almost perfect parabolic curve. Its actually very difficult to say exactly how this terminal tackle is behaving underwater, as it falls but whatever is going on, this evenly spaced shotting seems to be the pattern that works best and catches most fish. Only if you break the flight of the float and cause everything to land in a straight line; hook furthest away from you, then shot and then float, do you get a properly controlled predictable fall where you can count down the settlement of the antenna. Again this is not as difficult as it sounds; you can rely on a sort of clock in your head that allows you to estimate pretty accurately the time it
Peters Stillwater Blue set-up
the natural fall of the terminal tackle.
During the sinking process,
whilst the bait is actually on the drop, the float has a tendency to move forward, inching across the surface and following the shot and terminal tackle. If you prevent this by using the weight of the reel line to very gently hold the float in position, you create a more pronounced arc to the fall and you do seem to get more and better bites as a result.
The Fisherman's Vade Mecum - A Compendium of Precepts, Counsel, Knowledge and Experience in Most Matters Pertaining to Fishing for Trout, Sea Trout, Salmon and Pike