It has been a strange month with fish difficult to catch,
not just by me it would seem the reports were a similar result on many
different venues. Once I had found the
Johnson’s crucians had spawned, I turned my attention to the tench and I
decided at that point that with the cold Spring I would stay on the tench until
they spawned as well. Of course I would
drop the occasional river trip in once the season opened, but tench was to be
the main target. It was expected that
the London venue I fish would be difficult, it always is, but I did not expect
the local tench water that was so good to me last season to be almost as
hard. All the regular anglers on the
lake reported the same; blanks became the normal result with just an occasional
fish coming to the net. It seemed the
rivers had similar results with a few good catches as always, but many were
struggling though that is not unusual at the start of the season. Once a couple of weeks had passed and the
picture was the same it did give cause to wonder just what the weather and fish
were doing to each other.
I had a couple of evenings on the River Tame at Tamworth but
other than a couple of knocks on the rod tip nothing happened and I returned to
the tench. Just looking at my diary for
June and I can see that my day’s tench fishing were adding up, five days on the
local water where nights are not allowed, and eight nights giving 10 days on
the Bream/eel/tench water. I fish for
the bream and eels overnight and change to the tench at dawn, bit of a
compromise but it seems to have worked over the previous seasons. I think the bream are disappearing fast and
both last season and this I have struggled to catch, previously I would make
quite big multiple catches on a regular basis but that is no longer the case. My best bream from this water is 14lb-2oz but
I sure there will be 15lb + fish and maybe even the 16’s or 17’s left as the
shoal dies off, all I’ve got to do is catch one of them.
This week I decided on one last trip on the local tench
lake, that was Monday and I blanked.
Tuesday I got the gear together and at 6.00pm I left for London with a
view to being on the lake ready for the dawn start on Wednesday. A friend had
advised he had seen tench although they were on the least accessible section of
the lake and it would be quite a job to get the tackle to the swim. A public footpath passes right by the swims
on this section so all the tackle needs to go in one hit if you are fishing on
your own. Leaving some in the swim and
going back to the car would be asking to loose part or all of it! Even with a barrow this trip near knackered
me and I took three stops on the way, many years ago I would have done it in
one and maybe run part of the way. With
method feed, maggots, worms, swimfeeders and flatbed methods, six rods [spomb
and marker rods, three bream/ tench rods, and an eel rod] brolly camp, water
and the other odd bits you need like cooking gear and food, it’s a wonder I
survived.
Once at the swim I quickly set up the marker rod and had a
bit of a chuck round to see if I could find any features, I found a small bar
about 30 yards straight in front of my position, about 5ft deep, off to the
left it dropped off into a gulley at about 7.5ft, two rods in the shallow
section and the third in the deeper water, job done and I left the marker on
top of the bar. Now it was a simple
matter to cast out the Spomb to the marker and clip up ready for putting out my
feed. I now cast the tench rods out to
the marker as well so I could put a little power gum on to the line as a marker
for length giving the confidence that my bait would always be in the baited
area. Since I would fish both swims at the
same distance I could now reel the marker in and start baiting up using the
skyline marks I had taken to show where I would be fishing. The method feed was based on crushed Vitalin
with added Dynamite Silver Explosive X mix to give a guaranteed breakup of the
mix once it landed. To the mix I added
hempseed, 10mm Source boilies, sweetcorn and casters along with a few glugs of
molasses. Using the large Spomb I find
that it will take about my maximum handful of feed each load with it piled high
before I snap it closed, I put eight of these out to each swim in turn and I
was ready for the rods.
I started with three different hook arrangements, one on
rubber casters, one on a maggot feeder and the last on a combination variation
to that shown previously on the blog.
With a bait band tied on to the end of the hook link I slide a piece of
artificial corn up next to it and then use a knotless knot to tie the size 14
hook on the rig to finish it off. Leaving
about 4 inches length I ties a figure of eight loop and attach a swivel, then I
could place a 10mm Source boilie into the bait band and job done and ready to
fish.
At dawn I reeled the eel rod in with the lobworm bait still
perfect and untouched, now it was just a case of recasting each bait back out,
two in front of me and the other to the left hand swim. Two of the rods could be left for an hour but
the swimfeeder rig needs working and this was recast at regular intervals. The good thing was that the tench did roll,
not at dawn but an hour or so later and they kept it up for about an hour
before the activity almost stopped. Then
just an odd fish would show but no bites came to either me or my friend fishing
the next swim along from me, very frustrating.
By the time that 10:30am came about I was being to wonder
about the weed I was fishing in, perhaps that was masking the baits so a change
was needed. The artificial casters were
already being fished popped-up but the other two rigs were on the deck so I set
about lifting those as well. A buoyant
maggot lifted the swimfeeder bait and then for the combination rig I placed a
slice of foam between the corn and boilie, now all the baits would lift the
full 4 inch of the hook link and just maybe be showing above the gossamery
silkweed that covered the bar. Maybe one
hour later I got my first positive bite on the water this season and struck
into solid resistance, weed was my thought and I expected to need to bring the
fish back through solid weed beds. Taking
my time I just gave a steady pull with the 1.25lb test rod wrapped round but no
indication of a fish, no thumps or any other encouragement that the fish was
out of the weed. I began to worry since
all too often the weed will take the fish off the hook and it is lost, but then
I noticed it had kited to the left!
Weeded fish don’t kite – this was obviously just big and heavy and that
suggested a nice fat female out there resisting my attempts with steady
power. When it came into sight the size
14 hook took on a whole new meaning and I wished it was more in the size 6 sort
of category, but I need not have worried as the tench went into the net.
Just occasionally you look into the landing net and wonder
just how big your latest fish would be; this was obviously very big but with
the depth of its body just one inch either way in length would make pounds
difference in weight. All fish in this
state so close to spawning need extra care and I took my time getting scales
etc ready to make her time on the bank as minimum as possible. First I weighed and use a tape measure to get
the statistics, then she was returned to water to rest before I took a couple
of photographs. 12lb-1oz with a length
of 25.25 inch and a girth of 25.75 inch, a new pb and a real monster that
compares very well with any of my other species pb’s. I caught my first 6lb plus tench in the
1972/3 season and that went 6lb-10oz a real monster in its day, now I had
nearly doubled that figure to get a real monster for these modern times. When I caught that first six I did not think
I could reasonably expect to improve it, time showed I was wrong, but can I
improve this one, well that’s an open question though it will be very
difficult.
As a matter of interest it fell for the Source boilie rig
and I soon changed the second rod over to the same set up but it was to be my
only bite. Fate or luck, call it what
you like but with ten days on a 100 acre lake and just one bite and it’s the
big one. I chose this water to
concentrate on because I knew that could happen, but how often does the plan work;
most times you are on a blank and dreaming of what might have been.
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