Early Spring Tench

Fri 27th March 2009
I fished at Kingstanding pools near Needwood today, the idea was to explore the Perch potential of the Top pool, but it ended up turning into a little Tench session with me catching two fish in the 3 - 4 lb bracket. The first fish (a female) came to the pole set up that I was intending to catch some livebait on.



















The set up was just a small bristle float, 4lb main line with 3lb hooklength to a 18 hook, set to fish just on bottom. The float eventually shot away after being in for a 1/2 hour or so.

I think my consistant little and often feeding of the swim with redmaggots and occasional balls of bread crumb eventually drew the fish in. After a spirited fight with me thinking I'd hooked a small carp the fish was eventually subdued and in the net.

The second fish was caught later on in the session just before dark and on the perch float set up, with a chubber float 3aaa on 4lb mainline straight through to a size 6 hook and fished laying on. There had been a couple of dips on the float on the previous couple of casts prior to me hooking it. Then finally I recast to my dropper baited spot but this time I had cut the worm bait in half, as I figued the fish were maybe small and were dropping a whole worm.



Within seconds of the cast, the float dipped again then gradually started to move away across the surface & I struck into what felt like a good fish, "if this is a perch its a good one" I thought to myself. The fish stayed deep and jagged around near the bottom in the manner I would have expected from a decent perch, but as I raised it to the surface it turned out to be a nice male tench.






As the daily blanket of darkness was now almost complete, I had one last cast before before deciding I could no longer make out my float in the gloom. Not a bad session considering it's still only March and I even picked up a tip from one of the ballifs, about some areas to try for Perch on the canal into the bargain too - so can't wait to try those out.
The Water Temp remained around 8 deg C all session, and with the air temp falling from 8.5 down to 3.5 as darkness fell.