On returning from my holiday I gave my Norfolk mate a ring. “Come on then, mate, what’s the story then?” I asked. He told me that the chap who ran the syndicate had been forced to double the fee and, because of this, a couple of the locals had dropped out. “Bloody hell, what do I owe you then” I asked.
“A ton” he replied to my great relief!
The next day I took a 90 mile drive up to Norfolk to check that I could still find the place, it being well off the beaten track, and to have a look around. I thought that being a Sunday there would be a few anglers about and that I could, perhaps, glean a bit of info from them. Cresting the rise from the car parking area (a small clearing off the dirt road in the forest) I was greeted by the most appealing lake you could imagine. Heavily weeded, only a quarter of its thirty acres was accessible due to the surrounding, deep reed-beds. The few fishable swims were wooden platforms built amongst the reeds on the South West quarter of the water. Most importantly there was not a bloody soul there! A plumb-around in a few of the swims revealed a depth of about eight foot close in, gradually shallowing the further out you went. The bottom close-in was firm gravel, turning silty further out. That made sense as there had been some de- silting carried out since I had last fished the place decades before. Not much else had changed; the few trees along the water’s edge were bigger but not much more. As I was about to leave I heard another car arrive and a chap walked through the trees from the car park. It turned out he was the bailiff. He’d seen the plumbing rod and asked what I thought I was doing. I introduced myself as a new member and said that I was just having a look around prior to a trip the next weekend.
” Arr your alroight then bor” he said in his broad Norfolk tongue. He told me that his name was Kevin and that he lived locally and was not fishing today; he’d only come to have a check around.
“How come there’s NOBODY fishing today” I asked.
“Oh” he said, “it’s almost always like this, bor”
I was shocked, as was he, that someone would drive all this way to fish here. I told him that Norfolk boys are spoilt for choice where fishing was concerned and that a water like this, if one existed around my way, would be dead man’s shoes.
He said that there were plenty of tench in the lake but that he didn’t fish for them himself; he liked to try for the few remaining carp but had yet to land one! He went on to tell me about a couple of old fellers who came down now and then for the tench but, largely, it was left alone!! “Just leger a bit of pellet paste a few rod lengths out and you’ll catch tench” he told me, “they drive me bloody mad of a night when I’m after the carp”
Legering, eh? Not too keen on that, I thought, but I’ll take the local’s advice for a first trip out”
I left home at 2 am the following Saturday and drove like a man possessed in order to be on the water for daybreak. Driving through Epping I was amused to see a crowd of youngsters leaving a nightspot. Funny, I thought, they’re just going home and I’m just going out!
Arriving at first light I stood on top of the bank… not a soul about. Lovely. Then a tench rolled in front of me. That’ll do for me, Tommy, I thought. I had made a large tub of ground-bait the previous night, consisting of twelve pints of particles, hemp, chick peas, stewed wheat, maize and pellets, bound up with white crumb. Going back to the van I brought this and the tackle down to the swim then proceeded to throw out a dozen orange sized balls to prime the swim while tackling-up.
By the time I had two leger rods and one float rod set up the swim was boiling like a cannibal’s cooking-pot! I have seen some tench bubbles in my time but this was almost as if a volcano was erupting beneath the surface. As an aside, I have sometimes found that bubbling tench are not always a prelude to great fishing.
I remember a pike fishing trip to Ireland with, among others, the late great Suffolk tench angler Len Head, and asking him late one night in the boozer “Len, what do you do when you’ve a swim full of fizzing tench but can’t buy a bite?” His reply, verbatim, was “I don’t ****ing know. When you find out, give me a ring and let me in on the secret”!
Len, incidentally, was a man after my own heart. He maintained that a “four pounder caught on a float was worth any eight pounder on leger” Anyway, neither proved to be the case on this morning. The hooks were baited with a good sized knob of the prescribed paste and a ball of ground-bait was moulded around the lead; the whole ungainly lot was then cast out.
I had just got the second rod cast and was fitting the indicator on when the first was away and this continued in much the same fashion for most of the morning. Sometimes a lull would occur and, being a bit slow on the uptake, (well I was in sleepy rural Norfolk!) it took a while before the penny dropped and I twigged that more ground-bait was wanted. The introduction of this would set them fizzing again almost immediately and away the rods would go again. I then put a load of ground-bait under the rod-ends and soon this spot was fizzing again! Putting the leger tackles to one side, I dropped a float into the spot close-in and the sport continued fast and furious. By mid-morning I was out of ground-bait – and energy!
Kevin the bailiff turned up to fish the night and dropped down into my swim to ask how I had fared. “I’ve had a nice few Kev” (we were best mates by now) I told him, “give me a hand with the photos would you?”
Well, we got the camera ready, laid out the mat and anything else soft we could find – including my coat – and I tried to lift the net out. It took the pair of us to achieve this and a huge haul was deposited onto the cushioned area – but it was far too small. A couple of quick shots and we counted the fish back into the water. When the last was returned the count was thirty one splendid tench. Every one of them had fought like a demon – and big framed fish they were too, though not that heavy for their size. Good fish none the less.
Well I’d only gone and done it, hadn’t I? I had finally got my 20 fish catch and then some. Home for early afternoon, I fell into bed for a good kip before my usual Saturday night visit to the boozer, most definitely for a celebratory Guinness or six tonight! Well, I thought, I’ll never do that again!
A couple of things bothered me though: firstly, over half the fish were caught on the leger and, secondly, I had lost at the very least twenty fish in the thick weed. This was due to the furious fights these fish gave and the resulting hook pulls. This wouldn’t have done their mouths any favours so I resolved to do things differently the following Saturday. I dug out my old weed rake and decided that I would take only the float rods next week.
When I arrived at the crack of dawn, I spent some time raking the swim close in, finding the hard gravelly bottom after a huge pile of weed was removed. A large portion of ground-bait was then deposited before assembling the made-up rods. This only took a few moments but already the swim was boiling like the week before. Then it all started again, fish after fish after fish was landed.
Again, I was amazed that no other angler was present. About 7.30 an old feller arrived and set up in the next swim. “Hello, mate”, he said, “I’m Dennis, how are you doing?”
“Bloody wonderful” I replied. He casually set his rod up and soon he had joined in the slaughter, like me, float fishing just off the rod end. “Is it always like this?” I said to him.
“Usually” he replied, “you do know you’re fishing the best tench lake in the world don’t you?” I was well prepared to believe this. Again running out of bait mid-morning, I asked Dennis to do the honours with the camera. Once more, I couldn’t lift the net out unaided and this time we counted THIRTY FIVE tench back into the water! All caught on float and centre-pin as well, my old Allcocks Flick ’em (had to have one of them, it’s what Mr Crabtree used) and my battered Mordex Merlin that I’d had since I was fourteen doing sterling service
I couldn’t believe it – 66 tench in two trips! Is this real? I thought, or have I fell off the perch and woke up in heaven? The pub was certainly going to get some hammer tonight! Kevin the bailiff had turned up again and said “Youse boize hent arf hinjoin yerselfs hent yer? With broad grins on our faces both Dennis and I nodded our agreement.
Well, the summer wore on and the amazing fishing continued; indeed if I came home having caught LESS than twenty tench I thought I’d had a bad morning – a bit different from all the years before! Again these were not monster tench. I only ever caught a few six-plussers from the water and you would be amazed at how many 5lb 12oz tench this water held. Time and again I would think That’s a six and put it on the scales to find yet another five and three quarter!
I reckon I must hold the world record for five and three quarter pounders; I gave up weighing them in the end. Any one of them I would have given my right arm for as a youngster. But the general stamp was good: most were between four and a half and, you’ve guessed it, five and three quarter pounds. It was noticeable that very few male fish were caught, don’t know why that should be. Another thing that was very noticeable was the way these fish fought. I know that tench always give a good account of themselves but these were like maniacs and I ended up putting eight pound lines on my centre-pins. The lake teemed with fish life. It was almost solid with roach and I had some bream – but only two per session; never one or three. Strange. They were beautiful looking fish too, usually in the six to seven pound bracket and very dark. There were decent perch present too, and very large pike – hardly surprising with the amount of food fish in the lake; it’s probably the most fecund water I’ve ever known. The margins teemed with fry summer AND winter and the pike would often lie underneath the platform that you were fishing from and dart out to seize the odd roach that had managed to impale itself on a set of size 6 hooks. I did spend some very pleasant winter days pike fishing here too, taking some nice fish to over 20lbs, but a mate of mine managed a monster of 37.5lbs, at that time the biggest pike I’d ever seen.
Winter pike fishing was, as I said, a very pleasant affair. Kevin would often turn up to fish and would always cook up some very welcome bacon rolls, We’d become good friends during the years I fished there, and he would sometimes phone his missus up and instruct her to bring us fish and chips to the water – how bad’s that? True to form, the following June 16th (that was another thing I liked about the water: the close season was still respected and enforced) I turned up at dawn, again not a soul present, raked and baited, and started to catch fish hand over fist. Around 8.30 a Norfolk mate came down for a chat. By then I’d had twenty five fish.
“Sit in my chair and take the rods over mate” I said to him. He did so and we discussed the world to rights for the next couple of hours while he dragged a nice few in. When he left I had no desire to continue fishing, I’d had enough, so I packed up to face the long drive home.
Another thing was that this most beautiful of waters, beyond earshot of any road noise, teemed with wildlife above the water as well as below. The drive through the dirt tracks in the dark before morning would often be interrupted by herds of fallow deer crossing, and often I would hear – and sometimes see – bitterns booming in the reed-beds surrounding the lake. One time a couple of twitchers turned up late morning with their high powered telescopes and set up behind me as I was packing for home. I told them that they should have been here at 4 am and they would have seen a bittern. They looked at me as if I were mad. Another time a chap on a pushbike turned up at about 5am and sat behind me. I turned and asked if he was going to fish and he said that no, he wasn’t an angler, he just liked to come down occasionally to enjoy the solitude and to watch the sun come up. I could understand that and left him in peace. After an hour or so he got up and left, just saying “thanks” as he went on his way. Inevitably, and perhaps amazingly, after a few seasons things began to pall. I can understand the old tale of the trout angler who died and woke up on the banks of the Test, rod in hand, with trout rising all over the river. A perfectly executed cast rose a perfectly spotted two pound trout; the very next perfectly executed cast produced the same and so on, and on and on. Then one morning he was on the bank and the river keeper turned up.
“How do” the keeper said.
“Ok”, said our man, “it’s nice here in heaven isn’t it?”
“Oh…” said the keeper, “is that where you think you are?”
Our man looked closely at the keeper, and it was then he noticed his cloven hooves, his tail and the horns poking through his trilby hat.
It was time to move on. Now, I have no desire to catch the huge bags of tench again and am quite satisfied to catch a handful of fish, but always on the float, and always on dreamy summer mornings. Sometimes it certainly is better to travel than to arrive. Sod you Bernard. By the way, Kevin did eventually catch a few carp from the lake; the best was a 34 pounder caught on a float while having a rare day’s tench fishing!
Tony Corless
