Originally Posted by iain

hi jam, on a relative sparsely populated(barbel wise)small stretch of a small river which is gin clear for much of the time,it doesnt take too long to get a good indication of how many fish are in front of you,the same fish move from holding area to holding area at different times of the season,but they are the same fish. i agree on rivers that are more heavily populated ,working out how many are in a stretch would be far more difficult,that goes without saying,but on my results from one stretch i fished ,i could play snap with my photos.. i agree daveroach entirely with you.

Spot on - on bigger rivers it just takes a little longer - but not much.