Home Features Diaries Tench – Looking Back, Looking Forward

Tench – Looking Back, Looking Forward

March 29, 2007

Tench – Looking back, Looking Forward

LIVING WHERE I do, 30 – 40 miles from those particular waters I wish to fish, everything I catch has to be worked for, no less so for the cost and effort to get on the bank in the first place.

With each new season my priorities (and moods) tend to change and last spring (2006) I decided very early to try to catch some tench.

Thinking about my fishing and what I am trying to achieve, I have to ask myself if any ‘campaign’ or particular plan of action will be sustainable in the long run. Will I be able to get to my chosen water often enough, and for a long enough period of time, to build up any kind of mental picture of its patterns and moods, and ultimately catch a few?

Several club waters at my disposal are worthy of attention, many of which I have fished before, but one water was initially selected as I had, some years previously, had tench out to 4lb 6oz. However, on that same evening my fish turned out to be one of the smallest landed, with several fish over the 5lb mark coming out.

It is not exactly an inland sea at about 5-6 acres, and being very shallow it should have warmed up fairly quickly, so with location not being a major problem it should, in theory, have provided me with plenty of bites during the early spring!

Upon arrival in mid April we had cool and wet spring weather with wind and rain coming from the northwest. I decided to be as selective as possible right from the off and fish with bigger baits; 2 x 10mm boilies, various larger size pellets, single 15mm boilies, bunches of worms, large corn baits. All were tried on basic running leger tackle but with virtually no indications.

It took me that one session to decide that this particular approach, at that particular time of year time, was wrong for that water. A few anglers using pole gear around the lake had hooked and landed tench on what were relatively small baits, so a totally different approach was tried on the next session.

A few days later the weather had done a complete u-turn, and my 40 mile trip was greeted with warm, sunny weather and a nice southerly breeze. It was short sleeve weather and my confidence was booming.

Using a fishmeal groundbait mix fished through a small open-ended feeder with maggot hookbait, and following a succession of small skimmer bream, I landed my first tench within 45 minutes and several more tench followed over the next few hours.

The tench weren’t exactly queuing up to be caught but were there in reasonable numbers. A change to a larger hookbait did not bring larger fish, and my biggest fish of the day was probably 3lb 8oz. Overall the average stamp was lower than I had hoped and although I had really enjoyed the session, taking over half a dozen tench, I was still aware that bigger fish were probably still present. However, the thought of fishing through all those two-pounders, not to mention the skimmer bream, in the hope of hooking something a bit special didn’t really excite me too much. The water also has a one rod only rule which somewhat limits the scope for experimentation.

Pastures new were needed

So I decided that pastures new were needed; a more suitable water with a record for producing big tench. One such option was a fishery much more renowned for its carp, and therefore very popular with carp anglers, but with the very realistic chance of a very good tench. Yet competition for swims was always going to be tough, and with those carp getting in the way and a 70 mile round trip to boot, I decided to give it a miss.

Another water also had decent prospects, and indeed had given me my current PB, a float-caught fish of 6lb 4oz. However, I felt that would probably produce a little later in the spring due to the fact that it is very deep in parts, not only that but bank space was quite limited, and for some reason I did not fancy it for longer sessions. So, I decided my next stop would be a totally different but equally daunting prospect, a mere of over 40 acres. The water is quite deep in parts and if reports were correct it has a history of producing tench to 8lb+.

A couple of short dawn sessions gave me a bit of an idea what to expect and two sessions with just a marker rod, and several extended chats with a few helpful carp anglers gave me some idea about the lake contours.

My approach

I approached the initial short sessions with a sliding float on one rod and running leger on another. These sessions were planned mainly to get a feel for the water. I didn’t expect anything on my first few visits, although a few sightings of fish or, dare I say, even a few bites would have been nice.

I positioned myself well inside one of the many bays and the marker told me that the depth gradually went down to approx 14ft with no real ‘features’. A lot of the bottom was covered with weed even this early in the year, although, with a bit of searching, some clear spots could be found.

Baits initially used on the sliding float rod were bread, corn and worms, with the latter giving me some absolutely sailaway bites one morning, but sadly I missed probably five bites on the bounce and had no idea what the cause could have been. Perhaps smaller fish were taking my dropper shots as I had fed quite heavily with pellets.

On the leger rod I again used a wide variety of baits including pellets, mini boilies, corn and maize. One brief period at around 9am gave me several short ‘beeps’ on the buzzer, but nothing concrete. I cast a little shorter in case it was line bites but nothing; still, the object of this particular part of the exercise had been a success: I had gotten a feel for the water, and that had helped me in part formulate a plan for my next visit.

And that was to be a 30 hours session starting at 5 ‘o clock one morning in the middle of May. The elements, it had to be said, were against me, for although a nice dry southerly was initially forecast; a somewhat wet north/north easterly was there to receive me – strange that!

Baiting up

I had made a conscious decision to bait one area 20-30 metres out, amongst the weed, and to fish this area with a method feeder. The water does get fished for carp and many carp anglers use PVA bags and mesh stockings, and spods, all of which leave small deposits of food on the lake bed. So such small piles of bait are quite common to the fish.

By using a method feeder and a dense ball of pellet groundbait I felt that it would sail through the weed leaving the hookbait free and untangled. I prepared the feed so it did actually break up, albeit quite slowly, so the bait, a brightly coloured 10mm boilie, would eventually be released and the whole pile of goodies would hopefully mimic the deposits left by carp anglers.

Preparing the feed is simplicity itself. Micro pellets when slightly dampened can be bound really densely and will sink like a stone, but will not break down until the feeder has been on the bottom for a good few minutes, but eventually breakdown they will. Addition of a bit of PV1 will also slow down the breakdown time and additives can be added, as well as a few freebies if need be.

I would use single baits on the second rod, or a variety of PVA bags and stockings mainly containing a pellet mix, cast around the swim to the clearer areas, and also at any fish that were spotted within casting distance!

The rain was merciless and setting up was a right laugh. Later on my mate joined me and got soaked setting up, but to add insult to injury he lost what looked like a good fish on sweetcorn on his first cast at about 12.30pm!

The Method rod was away!

The day wore on with no further indications and after an evening meal, I settled down, recasting both rods. Then at about 6pm the method rod was away, and after a short but spirited scrap, a personal best tench of seven pounds was landed, a new PB and a very happy Eddie.

Eddie with his hard won PB 7lb tench

That night, for probably six hours, there was a downpour of biblical proportions. The rain was hitting the ground so hard that items of equipment which were well underneath my shelter got totally splattered with mud. I had just one more take at 4.45am but somehow managed not to connect with the fish, and a few hours later I was home and dry.

A few more short evening sessions followed. I float fished and mainly tried a few different areas, using boilies, pellets, worms and corn without so much as a sniff of a bite. So with the world cup upon us and ridiculously hot weather to boot I decided to have a self imposed lay off for a few weeks, which pretty much put paid to my tench fishing for the year!

And that was it. In a nutshell I was fairly pleased with the ratio of hours spent actually fishing to fish caught. Apart from that ‘proper’ session, all my other sessions were very short, 3-5 hours, which in the main ended up as either plumbing or fact-finding sessions. There was some success in that the method feeder had worked and a new PB had ensued, and now I possibly had some semblance of a starting point for next year.

So what are my hopes and aspirations for this coming spring?

Well at the time of writing it will certainly be tench again, but with the added hope of a bream. This will probably take up my time until June. The same large water will be taking the brunt of my session fishing, the term ‘session’ being used in the loosest possible terms.

Having a very young family at home means that 24-36 hours on the bank is a real result for me, and I have to be realistic about the time I can hope to put in. However, I have an ace up my sleeve which if it comes to fruition in good time, may mean that I will get more sessions in than last year, and hopefully allowing for a small step up the learning curve might see a few more similar sized fish on the bank.

My strategy for future sessions

And indeed, the season, will depend again on my mood and the conditions on the day. However I’ll almost certainly start where I left off last year, by fishing the method feeder on one rod, and possible revolve this around a baiting strategy to try and increase my chances.

As for a pre-baiting campaign, distance always makes any pre-baiting prohibitive, but ‘the will’ is there as I write. The only question is how such a campaign can be shaped to have the required impact? At this point I want my pre-bait to identically match that which will be in my feeder both in content and behaviour.

I hope to pre-bait with balls of micro pellet, whereby in each ball there will be maybe one or two small boilie hookbaits, basically providing not much more than a few decent sized mouthfuls. Initially I will fire these out in quite a wide area but as I get closer to the actual fishing time I intend to try and concentrate the balls much closer to the areas which I will be fishing. The idea being that the fish get used to seeking out the small parcel of bait, which in all fairness, they should be used to already. Not only that, but hopefully they will also learn to associate each pile with a couple of free snacks in the shape of 10mm boilies. Spreading these out quite far should increase the chances of them being picked up initially, prior to fishing. Whilst concentrating them in a tighter area closer to the time may bring the fish into the target area.

So that’s the theory, we’ll see what happens!

The second rod will be something entirely different. My initial attempts last year told me that maggots are a reasonable starting point when the weather is warming up, and the excellent tench articles from Steve Innes also highlight maggots as a productive bait, so it may well be that this is where I start out. If this is to be my chosen bait, I am as yet unsure of the actual tactics and presentation. I may fish them through a feeder with regular casting using a quivertip as an indicator, or maybe by just initially spodding out a large quantity and fishing my hookbaits over the top using a bite alarm and butt indicator, or maybe even possibly by heavily baiting the margins with maggots and fishing a lobworm under the float!

The idea of this article is not ‘this is how I am doing it and that’s final’ more like ‘this is what I am thinking, now what do you think?’ I will follow this up with another piece exploring my thoughts on rig choice, hooks and hooklengths.

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