The English coarse river close season, running from mid-March to mid-June, catches new anglers out every year – not because the dates are secret, but because it’s easy to forget just how much of your usual fishing suddenly becomes unavailable when it arrives.
What I actually do during those three months is shift entirely to stillwaters, which have no statutory coarse close season. Commercial fisheries, club lakes, and gravel pits all remain fair game, and honestly, late spring on a stillwater – as tench and bream start feeding hard pre-spawn – is some of my favourite fishing of the year. I’d go so far as to say the close season pushed me toward stillwater fishing I might otherwise have neglected in favour of always defaulting to rivers.
It’s also when I do the tackle maintenance and preparation I otherwise put off – respooling reels, sorting through the tackle box, tying up rigs in bulk for the season ahead. Not glamorous, but it means the river season, when it reopens in mid-June, starts with everything actually ready rather than being sorted out reactively on the bank.
Some anglers use the close season to travel for stillwater-only sessions somewhere new, since it removes the temptation to default back to a familiar home river. If you’ve never used the close season as an excuse to properly explore stillwater fishing, it’s worth treating as an opportunity rather than purely an inconvenience.
Gear that fits this
Gear that suits what this covers, by type.
Floats and terminal gear: Preston Innovations Des Shipp Commercial Slims F1 Fine Pole Float 4×16, Drennan AS4 Pole Floats 0.3g and Preston Innovations ICS Elasticated Stem Kit 60mm Short / Heavy.
For baits, Dynamite Baits Swim Stim Match Margin Mix Groundbait 1.8kg, CC Moore Odyssey XXX Bag Mix Pack and Mainline Super Natural (Cereal Biscuit Mix ) 1kg are all worth a look.
Reels worth adding: 20 GS BR LT 5000-C Reel, 25 TDM Reels-4012QD and Sk-47 Carbon 7000 Reel.
On the rods side, Acolyte Commercial Feeder Rods-9ft, Daiwa Tournament SLR Feeder Rod 2025 Model 10' 2 Piece and A-Class 13'0" 3pc Float Rod 1-15g.
Dan Whitfield grew up in Liverpool and started fishing aged seven on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal at the end of his road. He never really stopped. He spent his twenties and thirties on the match circuit – club level rather than national – before deciding he’d rather catch one decent fish than a net of small ones.
These days he mostly fishes the River Dee for barbel and chub (barbel personal best 14lb 2oz, from the Trent on a trip south), the Leeds and Liverpool Canal for roach and skimmers in winter, and the occasional gravel pit when tench are spawning and the surface fishing is too good to miss. He’s a former club secretary and coaches children on Saturday mornings at a junior section of a Liverpool angling club, where most sessions start with a float, a tin of maggots and a lot of patience.
At The River Bend, Dan writes the coarse species guides, river fishing technique articles, and the match and pole content.
Covers: Barbel, bream, roach, tench, carp (coarse context), river fishing, canal fishing, feeder, float, match/pole