For many years it's been regarded as a sought of tradition that quality roach are generally caught and fished for by fishing the stick float, others on wider rivers especially tidal often prefer to use the waggler although in fairness the stick will still work just as well
One of my preferred ways to target big river roach is to use ultra light ledger tackle and fish on a roving principle, pretty much the same as one would fish for winter chub.
I've never believed in using link ledgers or running rigs when using any less than say 1 1/4 - 1 1/2 oz of lead reason being for example if one was using 1/4 - 1/2 oz of lead there is absolutely no way that the line will pull through a run ring or swivel to register on the quiver tip without moving the lead, the reason being that the lead is far to light for it to affectivly be used as a run rig , the lead probably and realistically needs to be about 1 1/2 oz to be able to stay put on the river bed, also one needs to remember that any object regardless to what it may be is far more buoyant in flowing water
With this explanation is the reason why I now just simply pinch 3-4 AAA shot onto me mainline 3-4 lb, about 18-24 " away from a size wide gape 14 - a std size 12 hook.
If I need to I will incorporate the use of some 0.5mm silicon on which I squeeze the shot onto to protect the mainline.
The shots only weigh just a few grams and would redeem inferior if used as a link or free running rig as explained above
This is generally how I fish roving for big river roach, I generally walk the stretch and introduce a golf ball size of mashed bread into several different swims and then fish them in rotation often covering about a 1 mile stretch in one day.
Some of me many Medway roach swims,
I prefer to go looking for small groups of quality roach that could be hidden up in only just a few certain swims rather than spending hrs in one swim trotting and trying to bait up little and often all day long with often very little to show for efforts, yes I can fully understand that many roach can be caught out of one swim and carefully creating a feed line throughout the day but from my experience once a number of small roach get caught the bigger, older and wiser roach all to often back off
.... 
Nowadays the only main time I tend to fish the stick or waggler is when I'm perhaps fishing the tidal Thames in big exapancies of water which obviously wouldn't be suitable for for me light ledgering and roving tactics which I now only do on the smaller tree lined rivers
I'd be interested to here from other opinions on ledger vs float
this is ok but not my preferred way of presentation.
