I arrived at the river yesterday afternoon with my pal Terry for a short session, to discover that I’d forgotten my usual trotting floats and only had a few pole floats in the boot of the car. Not ideal for trotting the river, but its not the first time that I’ve used a pole float for trotting on a river. When you have no other choice you have to adapt !
However -as you can see in the pics below – a 0.6 gram float wasn’t ideal for a fast pacy river that had a bit of extra colour in it from overnight rain.
Terry chose his swim at the head of the pool – and fished with a simple gold head Pheasant Tail Nymph,,,, I settled down in the smoother deeper water at the tail end of the pool and fed a few maggots every couple of minutes… and then cast in.
I needn’t have worried as 4 fish in my first six casts soon gave me the confidence that my bait was down where it needed to be.
Maggots did the trick on a size 12 Kamasan B560, 3lb hook length and my trusty old Abu 506 – I caught fish steadily for an hour…. including taking a break to sort out my friend Terry who accompanied me.
Looking at the river in the picture below, you’d never believe that such a light rig would be effective. But believe me 3 x No4 shot which only adds up to 0.6 grams had the bait down doing the business where it needed to be.
![Fly Fishing River Holme](https://fishingfiend.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/20181126_141126-300x225.jpg)
![River Holme Grayling](https://fishingfiend.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/20181126_141201-300x225.jpg)
We only had time for an hour or so fishing and we ended up with 16 fish between us. A nice short sharp session on a cold Novembers day.
![Using A Pole Float For Trotting The River](https://fishingfiend.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/20181126_180046-e1543351693815-1024x768.jpg)
My reward was plenty of these……. happy days.