Rudd Cyprinidae Scardinius erythropthalmus.
Distribution : Common in England, Ireland and parts of Wales and southern Scotland.
Notes : Deep bodied with large silvery scales, iris golden. Bright red fins.

A deeper bodied fish than the roach. The eye is gold and the pelvic, anal and tail fins are bright red.
The pelvic fins are positioned forward of the dorsal fin.

Tackle, Bait, Techniques

Rod
12ft to 13ft

Reel
Fixed spool 

Line b.s.
3lb, to 4lb

Hooks
No. 8 to No.16

Lifespan
10-12 years

British record
4lb 8oz, 1933

Specimen weight
2lb

Bait
Bread, maggot, casters, hemp,
sweetcorn, lob and brandling.

Groundbait
Brown/white crumb and casters

Techniques
Ledgering, trotting.

Landing and playing a fish

FEW ANGLERS would argue that the true rudd is one of the most beautiful of all coarse fish, with its flanks scaled in buttery gold and its fins tipped with scarlet. However, because the species has a tendency to hybridize with roach and bream, true rudd are quite hard to find and are easily mistaken.

The best way to tell if your catch is a true rudd or not is to look at its mouth. Rudd are surface feeders and, as a result, possess a lower lip that noticably protrudes beyond the upper.

Rudd are found throughout central and southern Europe, but there is no doubt that rudd fishing has been in decline for some years, probably in deference to the more aggressive roach. In Ireland, for instance, rudd fishing used to be spectacular, but since the non-native roach was introduced around 50 years ago, the rudd population has gradually diminished.

All is not lost though, and there are still plenty of rudd left in shallow estate lakes in England and reed­fringed Southern Irish lakes and loughs.

Tactics
Rudd like to pick insects off the water’s surface and so one of the most enjoyable and deadly of all methods for catching them is to fly-fish close to strands of reeds using small dry flies or slow-sinking nymphs.

The coarse angler without fly-fishing tackle should first try to locate the fish by feeding floating casters downwind along reed beds until fish start to show themselves at the water’s surface. Once you have found the fish, the best method is to fish a waggler float, fixed bottom end only, allowing you to sink the line between the rod and float to eliminate any surface drift.

TACKLING UP
Using an ordinary 13ft (4m) waggler rod and a reel loaded with 2lb (0.9kg) line should give you great sport. Hooklengths should be about 1.5lb (0.7kg) and the hooks should be fine wire to allow a slow, natural sink of the bait. A crystal waggler and some shot completes the set-up.

Select one of the ‘crystal’ waggler floats, as you will be fishing in clear water and you do not want to spook a shoal of fish with a large, opaque float. Set it so that all the shot are around the float’s base and only an inch (2.5cm) of the tip shows above the water, and allow two to three feet (60-90cm) of line from float to hook. Now feed a pouchful of your hookbait (maggots or casters) into the swim. When you cast in, the float should be ‘checked’ just before it lands so that the hook is presented in a straight line beyond the float. In this way the hookbait will sink naturally with the loosefeed and, if you have got things right, your float wil1 sail away.

To increase your chances further, fish floating maggots on the hook. Making them float is very easy. Place a few maggots in a quarter of an inch (6mm) of water in the bottom of a bait box fitted with a lid with its centre cut out. The maggots automatically absorb air so they do not sink and drown, and within five minutes they will all be floating. The cut-out lid allows you to get at them but stops them all crawling out of the box.

Floating maggots will counterbalance the weight of the hook and either sit on the surface of the water or sink very slowly. Deadly!