Frankie Gianoncelli's Winter Waggler Winner!

The main reason that the waggler is so effective at this time of year is that it gives you space and water to yourself. These are both things pole anglers constantly look for and talk about, yet very few reach for a waggler rod that makes the process so easy! Of course, you need the right swim and venue to do it, but anywhere that offers an open-water swim or free water to target beyond a pole line is the perfect opportunity to make the most of this fantastic method.

Kit And Setup

You don’t need complicated stuff for the waggler, and generally, my thought process is that if you can reach the fish, you’ll catch them! For this reason, I usually use a heavier float than most anglers, which makes casting easy.

I like to be able to lob the float a long way past where I plan to fish if the peg allows, and sink the line by drawing the float back with the rod under the water. A stable, bodied float is always my go-to; anything from 3g to 6g covers most of my fishing, and I like the standard Loaded Wagglers for most of this work that cast accurately and sit superbly in all conditions.

The next most important part of the setup is the correct mainline: it needs to be thin, sink, and have some strength if big fish are the target. Drag Line in 4lb (0.20mm) is exceptional and offers all these assets. It’s very cheap and comes on 1000m spools, which is handy too; it's the ultimate thin, strong, sinking line. The last thing you want is a line lying on the surface, in annoying winter skim and wind, and your float getting dragged out of place. Combine a heavy, bodied float with this kind of mainline, and you’re laughing!

The heavy float helps me get to where I want and offers utmost stability while fishing, but despite this, my terminal setup below is light and minimal. The aim here is to give fish the best chance of seeing the bait fall in cold, clear water, and often you catch on the drop or just after the bait settles, where a fish has followed it down.

For this reason, I fish light down the line, a tiny Micro Diamond Eye Swivel to attach the mainline to the hooklength, with between 2 and 6 No. 9 shot spread out down the line, depending on depth. To get the shotting right, I set up the float between Super Tight Line Stops, place what droppers I want down the line, and add or remove the brass disks in the float to get it as dotted down as I can.

It is then a case of adding a few No. 9 trimmers below the float to finish the shooting. This is ideal as you don’t have a big, cumbersome shot on the line to damage it and make it fly inaccurately, and the whole rig is so simple and easy to assemble.

Hooks and hook lengths are also light, always 30cm, to allow a slow final fall of the bait and to make sure I don’t see a bite too early. If the last shot is too close to the hook, you see bites fast and often miss them. Line diameters range from 0.10mm to 0.14mm for hook lengths. If carp are the target, I’ll use a Kaizen hook in an 18 or 16, while if F1’s or silvers are the target, it's usually a 16 F1 Pellet hook.

I like my float to be sensitive in the winter, so I often opt for a carbon insert tip. It gives the float more length and stability, but it's very sensitive and shows lift bites excellently.

Bait And Feeding

This is a variable you really need to play around with; it is species- and venue-dependent. I’ll be honest and say that maggots and casters make up 90% of my bait choice when waggler fishing. They catch everything that swims, and you can feed them over a sensible area.

I like to try and get the biggest maggots or casters I can when loose-feeding with a catty; they go further and group better, especially in the wind. Using a powerful catapult can help too. I like the Incredipult; that’s an absolute beast, but it works well for distance and grouping.

When to choose between casters and maggots depends on the species and venue. I like casters for roach, skimmers, perch, bream and hybrids, and I like maggots for ide, F1’s and carp, but there are no hard and fast rules. You will also find that you can feed casters better in breezy conditions, which can really help accuracy and distance.

Feed amounts depend on the venue and spot, but consistency is always key. In open water, I’m trying to draw fish and get them competing, so regular bait falling and making noise is essential. If there are few fish, and I’m not expecting a lot of bites, less feed is what I’ll go with – maybe just 6-10 maggots each cast.

If there are loads of competing fish and mouths in the peg, I’ll feed a lot more - anything up to 50 every time. The idea is that there is enough bait to attract and hold fish without creating a buildup on the bottom. When this happens, fish can be tricky to catch, and you can miss a lot of bites, so finding the balance and altering amounts throughout the day is always the way to go.

The other bait that can be amazing on the winter wag is corn, especially when you’re fishing for carp and F1’s. It’s visual, you can feed at accurately at a distance due to its weight, and for whatever other reason, quality fish like eating it in the cold. With this bait, you can rarely feed loads, and pinging just two to six grains regularly is deadly on the right day.

Perfect Plumbing

A lot of people struggle with plumbing on the waggler, but I have a straightforward method for super accuracy, and it’s a piece of cake with the Loaded Wagglers. I put a 10g plummet on the hook, and then removed a couple of the brass disks from the base of the float. This makes the float very buoyant, but the plummet sinks and holds tight to the bottom, creating a fast, accurate reading – plummet on the deck, and the buoyant float aggressively floats up.

You can then tweak the depth as needed and literally plumb up to perfection! As a rule, I like to fish with four to six inches of line on the bottom on calm days, but if the venue is towing and in windy conditions, I’ll lay anything up to 18 inches over depth, with my final micro swivel on the bottom to help stabilise the rig.

Tricks Of The Trade

There are a load of small things that you can do to nick extra fish, catch bigger fish and get more bites on the waggler. One of the most important ones is thinking about where you fish in relation to your feed area, where you have a lot of control and freedom. This not only changes day to day, but even throughout a session.

On milder winter days, or when there are a lot of fish feeding later in the day, you will generally find the fish are right in your feed zone, competing for food and bait. It’s important to recognise this and make the most of it, consciously bringing your waggler back right into the feed.

On a tricky day, early in the session, or even after a good spell of catching fish when it can go quiet, fishing on the edges of the feed zone can be lethal. The back edge, or just past where your furthest bit of feed is landing, is my favourite place to target.

This way, your hookbait stands out, and you can get a quick, positive bite. On a windy day, when loose feeding like this, you need to be conscious of trying to fish down-tow of the feed too. Fish naturally sit here picking off odd bits of feed, and purposefully casting there, or letting your rig trundle through to that part of the peg, can work a treat too.

Another thing I’m keen to do in Winter is impart movement into the bait, just as you would on the pole. With a waggler, a quick half-turn on the reel will lift the hookbait up, giving fish a chance to see it and pick it up. This also gives you the option to search the feed zone a bit more. On hard days, I’ll cast to the back edge of the feed, and after a period of time, I’ll twitch the bait closer, then closer again, then again, searching the peg and lifting or moving the bait.

Don't Ignore Fishing Shallow!

A final trick with this method is to make sure you don’t ignore fishing shallow in the winter on the waggler, especially on deep venues. It works very well at many venues on those clear, cold, still days, and is almost like a method for ‘dobbing’ out in open water where the masses of fish are sitting in the cold.

You can get warm layers of water called ‘thermoclines’, and that’s why the fish sit at a certain depth in the warmer strip. Often, fish will hang off the deck when it drops cold well out of pole reach, too, so using the waggler to target these areas can work a treat. A single hookbait presented on the drop and suspended off the bottom can be just the tickle to pick them off.

Double maggot or a corn skin works well, left hanging there for several minutes at times, too. It’s a case of playing around with depth until you find where fish are sat, but generally exploring the middle third of the water column is probably best; this is often the best depth bracket.

What is great about fishing like this on a waggler is that you can really search the swim, casting left, right, closer, and further, covering a lot more water than you could even consider on a pole! Better still, you don’t have the pole waving about over their heads in clear water, too, that can spook fish away.

If you’re not using the waggler in your open water attack at the moment, hopefully, reading this is enough to give you some inspiration to give it a go. You can command your water, search it, and tailor the approach to any given day.