Avoiding Swans

How Can I Avoid Swans In My Swim When Fishing?

Reply by Dunk Fairly:

"I NEVER feed Swans, even when I'm not fishing. They are a wild creature and should be left alone to fend for themselves whenever possible. When humans have intervened in the natural feeding/life cycle of wild animals, it has led to one of two things.

1. Domestication. Where man has encouraged wild animals to become used to being fed and can then be "harvested", for their own gains, i.e. food of some sort.

2. Dependancy. Where the wild creature "needs" to go to man for food, therefore ceasing to be truly wild.

Neither way is good for wildlife in 90% of situations.

I remember when Canada Geese were rare in this country. We now have a plague of the things, to the detriment of our native species. This is entirely due to humans feeding them.

The only time humans have intervened by way of feeding wild animals which has been successful, is where self sustaining colonies of species have been initiated. Where there has been a wish to re-establish a breeding group has been desirous. Then, feeding is kept up until a dense population is built up, then feeding is stopped. This allows a population to stabilise to the point that it is self sustaining, using natural food sources.

For many, many years, no Swans were present at Redmire Pool. They were not "encouraged" by anglers. When I last fished there, a nest with a breeding pair had appeared. The pair were feeding happily on the heaps of particle baits the anglers (although few) were putting in. I'm not sure what the situation is right now, but I know that if the anglers stopped putting in piles of food, the Swans would have gone away naturally.

My advice is:

1. NEVER feed swans.

2. Where Swans are present, fish hookbaits only, or with very little free bait around your hookbait. Use a feeder or stringers. Do not groundbait.

3. Do not fish in water less that 5 feet deep (Swans can get their neck down to 4 feet).

4. Avoid taking dogs with you, when you know Swans are present. Swans will travel the length of a lake to "have a go" at a dog.

5. Be patient. If you shout or act aggresively to a Swan, it sees it as a challenge and will stay around to make sure it knows what you are "up to". You won't scare it away. "

Reply by Julian Grattidge:

"The main water I fish is about 5 acres, four feet deep (at most), with gin-clear water. In addition to a small head of large carp it plays host to swans, geese, and nearly every other type of water bird imaginable! Not easy to fish then, yet if you are persistent there is always a way around. Swans in general are stubborn, persistent and not as stupid as many make out. They will *always* have an eye (and an ear) on the main chance – all you have to do is make sure you don’t act and fish in a way that advertises the fact that you have food on offer.

Many anglers are their own worst enemy. When you first pull on to a water, have a look for any potential ‘winged’ problems. Usually, if a swan sees a new angler pulling on, the swan or swans will move near to the swim to see what the angler does. This is where you need to be careful – don’t put *any* bait in or pull out anything that looks remotely like a carrier bag, or make any noises that sound like crinkling carrier bags – the one sound they link to food more than any other! Also, keep all your groundbait, maggots, boilies, etc, inside your kit.

The swans will often come right into your swim to investigate further – let them. They will have a good mooch around near you but as there is no bait in the swim and if you don’t give them any food signals they will soon move off.

If you are looking to introduce a large bed of bait, wait until they are out of sight and earshot. This is another area where many go wrong. If a swan sees bait going in, it will make a mental note that bait is there – and it will keep coming back no matter how many times you try to shoo it away. If you are able to introduce the bait whilst the swan is away from the swim, so much the better; they are very crafty and will often move off then at the first sound be right back at speed and spot where the bait has gone in, so wait till they have moved a fair way off.

If night fishing on problem waters, it always pays to bait up in the 20 minutes before it goes dark – many water birds don’t look for food as much in the dark so there’s less chance of them finding it.

If you are determined to fish a certain swim and the swans don’t seem to want to move on, then there’s always the ‘miss-information’ approach. Take a few baits and walk a good way from the swim to an area where nobody else is fishing. The idea is to fire the baits to an area out of sight and sound of the spot you want to bait-up. If you can do it from an area where the swans can’t tell where the bait is coming from so much the better. Fire out a few baits near to them to get their attention, and then fire them at the desired spot. It helps to put them out at a depth where they can get at them. If they find a few they will stay in the area a lot longer than if the water is too deep for them to find any.

Once they are busy looking for the freebies, get your bait in – try and keep noise to a minimum and watch the swans as you are doing it – try and time it so that the bait lands on the surface whilst their heads are turned the other way. Also, try and keep yourself out of sight when you bait up. If they do a crafty and spot some bait going in and start moving towards you, then put a few baits in a different area and let them find and eat them. This will usually be enough to make them forget about the bait they saw going into your swim.

It can be a slow process, but the result in most cases is a swan free session, which is what you are after. What’s more, on some waters (like the Top Pool) I think the swans can actually tell certain people apart. Because I never give any food ‘signals’ to the swans when I arrive on the Top Pool; they now pay me no attention at all, most of the time they don’t even come over whilst I’m setting up, yet anybody else making noise, etc – they are all over them!

To be honest, on waters where there are a few fishing I don’t need to do a great deal to keep the swans off – there are more than enough anglers wearing big ‘come and get it’ signs around there necks to keep them out of my swim."