Swim resting: Is it out of vogue?

Q: Resting the swim: it’s a tactic that doesn’t get spoken about much, but circa 2008 it was a hot topic. On your travels do you see anyone adopting this approach nowadays and if so, have you noticed how effective it is? And do you believe it?

Gaz Fareham says: “Most people want to maximise their angling time over the course of a session, and if they’ve paid £30 a night for a day ticket then rationale seems to be get-the-most-amount-of-rod-hours-in-for-the-money, but whether you are on a day ticket, a syndicate, a day trip or even a week trip, I firmly believe that having your lines out of the water at carefully considered times can be a really valuable tool to employ.

“‘Resting’ a swim effectively means winding in and leaving the lines out of the area for a chosen amount of time, I think there’s no doubt that carp can be very aware of when they are being fished for due to the lines being in an area, and this is heightened massively in weedy situations. On most waters, the carp have fairly established feeding times, during the summer that might be through the night and first light period, in the autumn it is often later in the morning, and through the winter it can all be about night bites. This varies from water-to-water and season-to-season so if you are planning on resting your areas during the course of a trip, working out those patterns is the first, and most important thing to do; the last thing you want is your rods hooked in the butt rings at bite time.

“Resting an area works on the premise that often the carp will still be in the area outside of bite time during the remainder of a 24hr period, either visiting it or moving through, so by not having lines running through an area you are effectively tricking them into thinking they are no longer being fished for. I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve seen carp turn up in the only areas there are no lines in during a busy weekend. I did a feature up at Linear in Oxford years ago, we had a bit of time to kill and ended up walking round Manor, the lake was really busy with a dozen anglers ensconced and only two free swims. After sitting and watching after twenty minutes I saw a subtle show just twenty yards in front of the only empty swim on the River Bank. Twenty minutes later I had two in the net and the guy next-door had only caught one in four nights and was a bit bemused by what had happened. It was a simple case of the carp moving into the few small areas with no lines in, and I’ve seen it time and time again on everywhere from hard syndicate venues to heavily stocked day tickets.

“What ‘resting’ the swim also does is give you plenty of time each day to go for a good walk, look in other areas, climb some trees, peer into the snags, maybe even work a few stalking chances or do prep work elsewhere, or even just go and drink everyone else’s tea supplies rather than sitting stagnating in one swim waiting for the next bite time to tick around on the clock.”