4 UKMATCH dennis.indd - Maver Match

UKM winter bream/Denis White 

UKMATCH MAGAZINE 4 

February 22nd 2011 

4 UKMATCH dennis.indd 4 14/2/11 07:38:04

THE 

BEST OF 

BRITISH 

Never miss 

another bite! 

Banish those frustrating knocks and taps with a 

feeder rig that is so simple to fish, you’ll wonder 

why you never thought of it before. Barnsley legend 

Denis White is your guide to a whole new way of 

winter feederfishing for skimmers 

ANGLER FACTFILE 

Name: Denis White 

Age: 65 

Lives: Barnsley 

Occupation: Retired miner 

Sponsor: Maver 

Denis 

White 

Barnsley 

match legend 

‘ 

Ay Up Fatha!’ came 

the welcome on the 

other end of the 

phone, spoken in 

the deepest, 

broadest Barnsley accent possible. 

The tone belonged to probably one 

of the South Yorkshire town’s 

most famous angling sons, a man 

who has represented his country 

on dozens of occasions and was a 

founder member of the mighty 

Barnsley Blacks – Denis White. 

Now of pensionable age, former 

miner Denis is still going strong in 

matchfishing circles, winning big 

matches on river, canal and lake 

while finding time to sit on the 

Barnsley DAA committee and 

throw his heart and soul into 

coaching the area’s up and coming 

young talent – a full life at a time 

when most would be taking it easy. 

That’s not for Denis, or ‘Fatha’ 

as he’s known around the country. 

The man lives and breathes 

fishing, recently representing the 

England Veterans team at their 

World Champs. Surrounded by 

famous fisheries such as 

Worsbrough Reservoir, the 

Rivers Don and Trent and the 

big shipping canals, he’s had a 

matchfishing apprenticeship 

second to none. 

Fishing with likes of Scotthorne, 

Pickering and Clegg domestically 

and Ashurst and Nudd at 

international level, Denis has a 

wealth of knowledge on all manner 

of fisheries but if you ask him his 

favourite sort of fishing, he’ll 

always give you one reply – bream. 

“When I’m deaf, blind, senile, 

unable to walk or talk and 

incontinent, then I might consider 

fishing commercials but until 

then, not a chance,” Denis joked. 

“There’s so much good natural 

venue fishing around here that I 

can’t understand why people want 

to fish the same lake every week 

knowing what they’ll catch and the 

methods they’ll catch them on.” 

For that reason UKMatch asked 

the old-stager to catch some of his 

beloved bream. The Ouse was 

talked about but with winter rains 

ruining that possibility, Denis 

suggested a Barnsley lake just a 

stone’s throw from the house he 

was born in, one he’d fished since a 

kid and one full of skimmers. 


FEBRUARY 22ND 2011 


UKM WINTER BREAM/Denis White 

He’d promised to fish a feeder 

rig with a difference – deadly, easy 

to fish and allowing you to pick out 

liners from proper bites, the bane 

of any bream angler fishing the tip. 

“The venue we’re going to is 

Fleets Dam,” Denis announced. 

“There are millions of skimmers in 

there and they’re the shyest-biting 

fish I’ve ever known in winter but 

I’ve used this set-up for years on 

there and I simply never miss a bite 

on it. People call it my ‘secret’ rig 

but I’ve been using it for 20 years 

now so there’s not much secret 

about it. Why nobody else has 

cottoned on to it, god knows!” 

Elasticated feeder 

Fast-forwarding a few days to the 

banks of Fleets, Denis sat down 

the steep banks, hunched over his 

rod with his back against the wind. 

“Here’s the secret rig,” ‘Fatha’ 

grinned as he reeled in. The first 

thing that stood out was the 

several inches of white pole elastic 

above the feeder. What sort of 

contraption was this? The answer 

came within the next six casts into 

the depths – a pretty good one! 

“What this rig does,” Denis 

explained, “is to show up proper 

bites from liners. Any bream angler 

will tell you that when fishing the 

feeder in winter, they probably hit 

only a handful of fish from dozens 

of indications on the tip. Now this 

might be fine for a lot of people but 

in my experience I’ve found the 

best way to spook a shoal of fish it 

to keep striking a feeder through 

them every cast. You don’t want to 

be striking at line bites all match.” 

At first glance, the rig seemed 

crude, too crude in fact to catch 

wary skimmers, but as Denis 

deposited more and more fish into 

the net it soon became obvious 

that his set-up, which was basically 

a bolt rig, gave feeding fish little 

chance of escape once they picked 

the bait up. The key, according to 

Denis, is accuracy and patience. 

The rig is essentially several 

inches of No 5 latex pole elastic run 

through a swivel and tied into a 

loop. The knotted part is then 

trapped under the flat lead strip 

running through the middle of the 

groundbait feeder. The feeder has 

its original link removed so that 

both elastic and the loop of the 

hooklength can slip under the strip 

at either end. A short hooklength 

finishes off the rig and, watching 

Denis show how it worked, 

everything clicked into place. 

“A fish picks the bait up and 

pulls against the feeder and the 

elastic,” Denis said. “This is shown 

on the tip as a pull round or a drop 

back but this isn’t when you strike. 

Once the fish feels the weight of 

the feeder it bolts, setting the hook 

which will show up on the tip as a 

series of stabs or pulls. That’s how 

you know a fish is on. If you don’t 

get those pulls, it’ll have been a 

liner and you don’t touch the rod.” 

The idea came about almost a 

decade ago when tired of losing 

too many soft-mouthed skimmers 

on a normal paternoster Denis 

“WHAT THE RIG DOES IS SHOW UP 

PROPER BITES FROM LINERS, WHICH 

YOU DON’T WANT TO BE STRIKING AT!” 

Denis White 

Robert’s trusty Tournament whip 


experimented 

with a piece of 

pole elastic 

between feeder 

and hook as a sort 

of bungee. From 

there he moved on to 

a loop and hit upon the 

perfect compromise. 

The right rubber 

The key to the rig is using the right 

length and right grade of elastic to 

ensure positive indications and 

hooked fish. If the elastic is too 

heavy, the fish will be bumped, 

while too long a loop and the bite 

won’t be seen by the angler. Denis 

has a checklist that he goes 

through before deciding how 

much rubber to work into the rig. 

UKM 

Did you Know 

Denis is currently going great 

guns in the South Yorkshire 

division of the 2011 Shimano 

County Championships – not 

bad for an old-timer with 

a bad back! 

The ‘strike’ 

only needs 

to be a 

simple lift 

into the fish. 

“Elastic 

strength needs 

to be matched to 

the size of fish 

you expect to 

catch,” he revealed. 

“If I was fishing for 

big skimmers and the 

odd bream than around a No 5 

is perfect, whereas if I knew the 

match was going to be harder with 

more little hand-sized skimmers 

showing then I’d fish around a 

No 4 elastic to make the rig more 

forgiving. It’s just like fishing the 

pole – you have to work out the 

right strength of elastic to the 

stamp of fish.” 

In terms of length of elastic 

used, the longer the loop the more 

stretch there will be. More stretch 

means less of an immediate 

indication on the tip, perfect for 

The rig in full - Denis recommends varying the 

elastic strength to the size of fish you aim to catch. 

calm days where you can see every 

knock but when there are ‘white 

horses’ on the water from the 

wind, a shorter loop works miles 

better, producing quite a savage 

bite in amid the waves. 

On a snooker table 

Accuracy and patience are Denis’s 

bream fishing watchwords and the 

first part can be easily achieved 

thanks to a line clip. 

“Forget what you read about 

landing your feeder on a dustbin 

lid, though. Believe me, bream 

don’t feed in such a small space for 

the full five hours of a match,” 

Denis said. “They’re like cows in a 

field and move around grazing, 

probably over something the size 

of a snooker table, so if you can 

land each cast within a spot the 

size of that, you’re doing well.” 

Denis has picked a spot a 

comfortable 35 yard cast into 

Fleets, although distance will vary 

depending on the venue. 

“Feederfishing for bream is 

about finding your range, being 

accurate every time and not 

getting impatient,” he explained. 

“I’ve got lots of old sayings and one 

is that ‘bad anglers never make bad 

casts.’ By that I mean that if a bad 

angler doesn’t hit the right spot, 

they’ll say ‘that’ll do’. It never will 

where bream are concerned and if 

your cast goes off target, reel in 

and try again.” 

A natural approach 

On the subject of feed, it’s 

refreshing to see no pellets on 

Denis’s side tray. Although Fleets 

fish see lots of pellets through 

spring, summer and autumn, 

in winter 

‘Fatha’ 

THE 

BEST OF 

BRITISH 

For gentle 

casts, short 

bomb rods 

are the 

perfect tool. 

sticks to a natural approach, using 

casters, pinkies, maggots and a 

classic sweet groundbait pepped 

up with just a touch of fishmeal. 

“The base of my mix is Van Den 

Eynde 5G which is Alan 

Scotthorne’s groundbait and a bit 

of an all-rounder for roach and 

skimmers,” Denis said. “To this I 

add a little green fishmeal 

groundbait with the final mix 

being on the dry side so it comes 

out of the feeder quickly once on 

the bottom. To this I’ll add just a 

sprinkle of 

casters 

and 




UKM WINTER BREAM/Denis White 

THE 

BEST OF 

BRITISH 

mixed pinkies, fishing a single red 

maggot on the hook.” 

Don’t strike! 

Because the nature of the rig 

means the fish is normally hooked 

before you pick the rod up, the 

conventional strike isn’t necessary. 

Much like Method feeder fishing, 

all you need to do is lift the rod and 

wind into the fish with a steady 

pull. The most important part of 

the battle is winding the fish in, 

according to Denis. 

“You might not miss many bites 

fishing this way but that doesn’t 

mean the rig is a magic wand,” he 

said. “There’s still every chance of 

the fish coming off if you play them 

too hard, even with the light elastic 

as a bit of a shock absorber. Make 

every fish count and play them 

carefully, keeping the rod low and 

the winding steady. Even stop 

winding if you feel the fish kick and 

make sure it has stopped flapping 

about before you net it.” 

Talking tackle 

For lines and hooks Denis spools 

up with 0.18mm Maver Genesis for 

Double 

figures 

of Fleets 

bream for 

‘Fatha’! 

mainline and 0.12mm for the 

hooklength, finished off with a fine 

wire size 20 Preston Innovations 

333 (formerly known as the PR34). 

This seems a little heavy but 

because the rig is a bolt rig, some 

bites can be quite violent and 

slightly heavier line gives you more 

of a safety cushion. 

“Length of hooklength will vary, 

just like it does on a paternoster,” 

Denis explained. “Sometimes a 

long tail works but I’ve always 

found that if a bream wants to 

feed, it will come to you and to the 

feeder in particular. You wouldn’t 

fish an 18 inch hooklength on the 

Method feeder and because this rig 

is a bolt rig, shorter is in my 

opinion better, sometimes using a 

hooklength six inches long.” 

For such a short cast and with a 

fine tip needed, Denis keeps his 

normal 11ft bream tip rods in the 

bag, instead using a slender bomb 

rod for winter skimmers. 

The short line 

Like all good anglers, Denis has 

other lines up his sleeve but they 

don’t involve the pole. That never 

Van Den Eynde G5 forms the base of Denis’s groundbait mix, to which he 

adds a little green fishmeal and a smattering of casters and pinkies. 

comes out of the bag, a second tip 

rod being set up instead for a 

gentle underarm cast on to the 

long pole line in the latter stages. 

“Just as carp do, so bream will 

move closer to the bank as the light 

starts to fade and this is where 

pinging a small feeder on to the 

13m line can give you half-a-dozen 

vital extra fish when the main line 

is slowing down,” Denis explained. 

“This doesn’t have an elasticated 

set-up as you’re fishing it at quite 

short range and you should be able 

to see what’s a line bite and what 

isn’t with relative ease.” 

The rig here is a paternoster, 

using the same lines and hooks as 

the other rod, and to ensure 

absolute accuracy Denis also clips 

up here but doesn’t get his range 

from casting into the lake. Instead, 

he sets his pole up on the bank to 

13m with the cupping kit on the 

end, pops the feeder in the cup and 

walks back with the rod until he 

reaches the end. This is the perfect 

13m and hits the spot every time. 

“I’ll cup in three balls of 

groundbait at the start here and 

then forget about it until around 

three hours into the match, when 

I’ll have a quick look,” Denis said. 

“However, if I don’t get a bite 

within a couple of casts then I will 

come off this line.” 

‘Fatha’ comes good 

Denis had promised a slow start, 

not reckoning the skimmers would 

get going until the afternoon, so 

when fourth cast produced a 

positive pull round followed by 

several sharp jabs on the tip, the 

2lb bream that was responsible 

was a bit of a surprise. 

Several more smaller skimmers 

followed in consecutive casts with 

no longer than a few minutes 

passing between cast and strike. 

Single red maggot caught them all 

and while anglers to Denis’s left 

reported missing a few bites, the 

old-stager had yet to miss one. 

“You just can’t fail fishing like 

this,” Denis said. “Even with my 

eyesight I can see what’s what! I’ve 

won god knows how many 

matches here and at Worsbrough 

fishing this way and I reckon it’d 

even work at places like Larford’s 

Specimen Lake.” 

When a liner did come along it 

was equally easy to spot. The tip 

pulled round, dropped back and 

remained motionless. Winding in 

revealed an unmarked bait, but 

fishing a normal paternoster, 

Denis admits he would have struck 

at the pull-round. 

An earlier than expected look on 

the 13m line also gave Denis two 

skimmers before the roach moved 

in. He missed just two of what he 

felt were proper bites before his 

aching back called time on the 

session with 20 skimmers in the 

bag for double figures. 

“I expect every bugger will be 

fishing like this down here after 

they read this,” he said. “I’ve no 

secrets though – I’m too old for all 

that. What I will say is that the rig 

is only half the battle. You still 

need to be accurate with your 

casting and patient when fishing, 

and you can’t get that from reading 

about it!” UKM 

“MAKE EVERY 

FISH COUNT AND 

PLAY THEM 

CAREFULLY” 

Denis White

4 UKMATCH dennis.indd - Maver Match

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